Hi Owen, I'm also Owen :) My grandmother went blind in her old age. She is pretty intelligent and wanted to learn new things so I thought I'd try to set up Voi

Hi Owen, I'm also Owen :) My grandmother went blind in her old age. She is pretty intelligent and wanted to learn new things so I thought I'd try to set up VoiceOver and similar things mentioned in this thread - various assisted screen technologies. Unfortunately it was a complete failure. I think that for whatever reason, in general trying to teach new things to an elderly person who's newly blind is an uphill battle. If you don't think he'll be able to hack it I wouldn't try, it's somewhat demoralizing to fail at something at any age. My grandmother dealt well with it but it was clearly somewhat upsetting to fail to learn something, especially as she was proud of learning other things quickly throughout her life (for example learning to drive, where she passed her test the first try with minimal prior instruction.) If you do think he has a decent chance at learning it I would start slow and build your way up. What did work was Siri, an audiobook player, and a Google Home connected to speakers. The one she uses most of the time is the audiobook player, it's a large chunky machine that takes CDs that she gets in the mail. Every so often she gets a menu of new available audiobooks and someone sits down with her to pick out which she'd like. The next most used is Siri on her iPhone. I set up her contacts with various easy-to-say names and now she can call whoever she needs whenever. She uses Siri 95% just to call people, the other 5% she occasionally does look something up or ask the weather but it's mostly just calls. The least used is the Google Home, which she uses to play classical music through the speakers. One thing that's not technology related is that being blind is lonely. The biggest thing that helps with this is regular small interactions. Any way you can facilitate more short visits is good, for example with the mailman, neighbors stopping by, family, et cetera. Even short phone calls help. The best are the visits that happen "automatically" so they don't slow over time. For example if you plan a phone call once a week to pick out some new audiobooks or podcasts to put on his device of choice. Good luck!