There's a point that arrives after all the sensible advice has been taken. The text is already large. The contrast is already turned up. The lamp has been moved, the glasses are the right prescription, the monitor is close. And your dad still puts the email down after two paragraphs, because the reading itself — the tracking along a line, the holding of the thread — has become work rather than pleasure.
Bigger stops helping somewhere around here. What helps next is different in kind: not making the words easier to see, but taking the seeing out of it.
Every computer, phone and tablet made in the last decade can read aloud, for nothing, without anything being installed. Very few families know it's there.
The free read-aloud that's already on the machine
- Web pages, in the browser. Microsoft Edge has a Read aloud button that reads the page in a natural voice, with a choice of voices and speeds, highlighting each word as it goes. It handles news sites, recipes and letters from the council equally well. Chrome and Safari have their own versions of the same idea.
- The tidy version of a page. Edge's Immersive Reader strips a page back to just the article — no adverts, no sidebars, no flashing panels — and can then read that. For a cluttered news site this is often the bigger win of the two.
- Anything on screen. Windows includes Narrator, which will read what's under the cursor. It's built for people who use a screen without sight at all, so it's more than most families need — but it's free, it's there, and it's worth ten minutes of trying.
- On a phone or tablet. Both iPhone and Android will read a selected passage aloud once the setting is switched on, usually filed under accessibility and spoken content.
A word on the voices: they've improved enormously and no longer sound like a robot reading a phone book, but they still stumble over names and read the odd abbreviation strangely. Most people stop noticing within a few minutes.
Where the good listening actually is
Read-aloud handles the everyday. For a whole book or a long programme, the UK has better options than a synthetic voice — and several of them cost nothing.
- RNIB Talking Books. The Royal National Institute of Blind People runs a large library of professionally narrated books, free to people who can't read standard print, delivered as downloads, on memory sticks or by post. Details are at rnib.org.uk.
- The public library, from the armchair. Most UK library services lend audiobooks digitally through apps like BorrowBox and Libby. A library card is free, and the borrowing is done at home without a trip anywhere.
- BBC Sounds. Radio, drama, comedy and a deep archive, all free. Worth setting up as a favourite rather than something to be navigated to.
- Podcasts, chosen for them. Not something most people over eighty go hunting for — but a subscription to one series on a subject they love, set up by you, lands very differently from "you should try podcasts".
- The everyday radio. Not to be underrated. It asks nothing of the eyes at all.
Reading matters differently to writing
Being read to solves half the problem. Replying is the other half, and it's often the half that quietly stops.
If typing has become slow or painful as well, an easier way for an older parent to reply covers dictation and the alternatives — a message spoken and sent takes a fraction of the effort of one typed with two fingers and a magnifier.
What My World does here — precisely
Our Windows app, My World, replaces the desktop with a screen of large, high-contrast buttons, and it reads the button names aloud — so getting to the photos, the radio or a call doesn't depend on reading small labels. Favourite radio stations sit one tap away.
Being precise about the limit, because it matters: reading the buttons aloud is not the same as reading documents aloud. My World is not a screen reader and doesn't narrate emails or web pages. For that, the browser's own Read aloud is the tool — and it's free.
We'd rather tell you that than let you buy something on a misunderstanding.
Making it stick
The tools are the easy part. Whether they're still in use in a fortnight is the real question.
- Set it up together, on their machine, with something they actually want to hear. A favourite author, not a demonstration paragraph.
- One route in, not four. Pick the single best option and make that the one — a shortcut on the desktop, or a station saved as a favourite. Four possibilities is the same as none.
- Write the steps down. Three lines on a card by the monitor, in large print, beats a remembered explanation from three weeks ago.
- Expect to come back to it. Needs change; so does what someone can be bothered with. Five minutes in a month's time is part of the job, not a sign it failed. Teaching a parent without the frustration has more on the pace of this.
Why it's worth the afternoon
When reading gets tiring, what usually goes first isn't information — it's pleasure. The novel. The long article. The letters. People manage the essential post and quietly give up the rest, and nobody outside the house notices, because nobody announces that they've stopped reading for fun.
Getting that back is not a small thing, and it doesn't take a purchase. Mostly it takes someone sitting down for an afternoon and turning three things on.
If the sound is a strain as well as the sight, making the computer easier to hear is the companion to this one — and if the screen itself hasn't been set up yet, start with making the screen easier to see.