Can you recommend a cordless phone suitable as a gift to a person in their eighties?

Bizi

Hello boards.ie pals,
My MIL is in her eighties and at her age, her eyesight and hearing are good for her age but not great generally.

In an effort to make her life easier, I'd like to buy her a cordless phone, to take her from the 70s to at least the 80s.

I've had a Panasonic myself here in Sydney Australia, but don't really know what local options would be good for her.

There are some deals at Argos.ie at the moment (cordless, twin handset, answering machine).

If you have any experience with something a clever but elderly person could work out and use, I'd appreciate it.

Given her hearing is now quite poor, a loud maximum volume is probably a good option and I expect I'd need to buy a decent phone to get this.

Sound quality is important, too. The BT phones at Argos have good discounts but poor reviews for sound quality!

Any tips are appreciated!

FreshCoffee

Doro make products suitable for the elderly. I have bought Doro mobile phones for some elderly relatives and they find them very good and easy to use. I see they also do cordless phones although I have no experience of them.

(Just tried to post links but got the message 'You cannot post with images, URLs or attachments because you are a new user)!!

Just Google Doro or search the w w w dot doro dot ie website for fixed line phones.

L1011

http://www.doro.ie/products/Telephones-for-fixed-line/Doro-PhoneEasy-110/ would be the cheaper Doro cordless phone

My luddite mother who, despite being married to an IT manager for 43 years and giving birth to a programmer, a broadcast engineer and a practical physicist acts as if anything made after 1960 is alien to her, manages to use a Doro mobile perfectly well. I've some memory that my grandfather used one of the remote controls before he died also. All their kit seems to excel at having only core functionality and doing it obviously.

Bizi

Thanks for your helpful advice.

I'll most likely get the MIL one (if she wants one) when I'm back there and can answer any of her questions and make sure she's happy to use it.

If you can remember back in the 1970s or 80s when people had a reel of phone cable attached to their corded phone - that's the situation she's in, with tangled cord or reel problems!

A cordless phone with an extra handset will allow her to give up the reel of phone cable and also have an extension upstairs.

Cheers, Bizi.

wmpdd3

the Siemens Gigaset had a large text window and clear numbers etc.

it rings very loud and the sound is crystal clear.

it's the model that's a chocolate bar shape, not the smaller one.

CJhaughey

I'd recommend Doro as well, very durable and large digits.
My mother has one for over 10 years and its still going strong.
Good quality stuff IMO.

moodrater

My mother is extremely deaf (-60db) she gets on great with a doro mobile, the uk deaf association approved siemens gigaset didn't work at all for her.

The major discovery I made was that if I call her over voip she can get every word, the codec/compression improves intelligibility far more than increasing the volume. I can also adjust the sent volume with voip.