Being There, Without Leaving Home - The New Old Age Blog - NYTimes.com

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by Paula Span

At the Selfhelp Benjamin Rosenthal Senior Center in Queens, a social worker, Rachel Itzkowitz, is leading the weekly current events class, guiding participants through a series of discussions. What did they think about that shooting at the Mexican border? About higher compensation for first responders injured on Sept. 11? And what about the controversy over building a Muslim community center near the World Trade Center site?

With backing from Microsoft and the city’s Department for the Aging, Selfhelp has created a “virtual senior center” for about a dozen low-income elderly people, with six more scheduled to join the party at the end of the summer.

Even with big touch-screen monitors and an easy-to-use interface (called It’s Never Too Late), it took twice-a-week training for a couple of months before the new users could manage the equipment. Most had never used a computer. One who’d never learned to type found the QWERTY keyboard confusing, so Microsoft substituted one with keys in alphabetical order. The group has taken advantage of adaptations like magnifiers and screen readers that read text aloud.

Bringing older people online proved to be, in other words, a labor-intensive undertaking. But Selfhelp’s vice president for senior communities, Leo Asen, is convinced that the benefits justify it.

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