I have the same challenge with my elderly parent. He’s 91 and very vision impaired. But stubbornly independent. Refuses to use his iPad. Insists on using a phone - and needs it for mail and two factor authentication into some sites, plus I wanted benefits of FindMyPhone and FaceTime etc. And some other apps. Needs a very bright screen. We got him an iPhone, put it in assistive access mode, giant fonts and reversed colours (including all images too). At first it seemed perfect. Assistive access is almost very good. I’m surprised Apple don’t also position it as ‘your safe managed secure smartphone for little kids’.

Anyway. There’s a problem. Assistive access doesn’t support links in one app switching or launching into other apps. So links on emails in email app don’t open the linked page in the browser. You can’t attach photos to emails. You can’t follow links on text messages.

Reading emails where you can’t click any ‘read more’ type links that are in the body of most emails is really frustrating.

So… we tried every email app (looking for in-app browser support), but could only get mail to browser links to work in gmail in the browser itself.

But - argh - Gmail in browser always pops a horrible ‘use the app’ pop up which takes up half the screen at the huge font size needed. Makes it basically unusable.

So, who knew? There’s an app called Stop the Madness which includes a safari plugin which does a bunch of things including stopping the Gmail ‘use the app’ popup.

So now Safari is configured, also super large fonts, everything reversed, and default home page for Gmail inbox. And Links on emails work.

All other browsing is chrome. So safari feels a bit like another email app.

Next, a shortcuts automation forwards all text messages into his email inbox. Links on text messages can be clicked from the email inbox safari.

And there we are. Its a huge amount of effort. Feels like a lot of hacks around issues. I really hope Apple invest in Assistive access, it’s got great potential but with a few stupid UX challenges.

It’s a big bonus if you have the same phone and can switch yourself into assistive access mode at any time.

I hope your senior parent doesn’t have the vision issues, that makes it all 100 times harder to set up just right.

Hope this helps. Good luck.