Gmail For Seniors: The Absolute Beginners Guide to Getting Started With Email

By Scott La Counte

If you are like millions of people, then your first email was probably AOL, Juno, or Hotmail. Email as a communication tool, however, has been around since the 60s.

Gmail is the most widely used provider today, and if you are using it (or considering using it) there’s probably a good reason: it does more than perhaps any other email

• Language: English
• Publisher: SL Editions
• Release date: Aug 27, 2019
• ISBN: 9781629179575

Book preview

Introduction

If you are like millions of people, then your first email was probably AOL, Juno, or Hotmail. Email as a communication tool, however, has been around since the 60s.

Gmail is the most widely used provider today, and if you are using it (or considering using it) there’s probably a good reason: it does more than perhaps any other email provider out there.

You can make phone calls with Gmail! You can make video calls with Gmail! You can send money to friends with Gmail! There’s so much you can do! But how?!

This book will show you how. It will also walk you through all the basics. So, if you’ve never used email in your life, then it will give you all the information you need to get started.

If you are ready to get the most out of Gmail, then let’s get started!

[1]

Tell Me About Accessibility

Accessibility Features

We are going to do things a little backwards. Normally, I start these books with a crash course of features, but for this book, I’m going to cover accessibility features first.

Accessibility features enhance the experience for users who might have trouble seeing, hearing, or just don't know how fast the mouse pad feels.

Why?

Because there’s a lot of features that might be helpful to you as you learn--such as text-to-speech.

Gmail is obviously something that you access online, which means you can use any browser you want to open it. Chrome browser? Definitely. Safari? Yep! Opera? Certainly! Any browser. So what does that mean? It means that the accessibility tools in your browser of choice will also work with Gmail.

Most browsers have a native zoom feature that makes the text bigger. It’s usually found in your menu and Zoom In. As an example, below is where it is in Safari.



Screen Shot 2019-08-26 at 9.13.39 AM.png

Chrome is very similar—under the main menu and View.



Screen Shot 2019-08-26 at 9.13.54 AM.png

Every browser will have lots of different accessibility features. To get the most out of it, make sure you review the features on your browser of choice.

Something else that is helpful is text-to-speech. That means you can read back allowed what’s on the screen. Later in this book, I’ll cover how to add in apps to Gmail; there are plenty of other accessibility apps you can add in.

Personally, I don’t use an add on. I use a Chrome browser plugin from TTSReader.com (you can also use it right from their