I use Skype a lot to stay in touch with my family when I travel -but with no one else do I realize the joy it brings - when I setup Skype for Mac on a Macbook at my 87 year old dad's home and have it auto answer to our calls with video. He loves it! Its been working perfectly even though he is in India, I'm in the US and I travel all over the world (right now in Korea!).

One thing he PLEADS to me is to be able to call us. Right now, the calls are initiated by us. But he WANTS to initiate the calls. Now before you say, just click on that green button - he is 87, his hand-eye coordination is not that great and even I have trouble getting the mouse arrow exactly on the green call button.

Why does SKYPE not have a Visual Contacts layout - like the iPhone - where the contacts are large big buttons that are colored according to their status? Or even a speed dial for the contacts - 1, 2 etc? It makes so much sense.

Skype is all that the Macbook runs! Its like a SkypeComputer (If they made one, I would buy it for my Dad!)

I have tried to do some setup with Mac OS X accessibility but it does not work well.

I have found one app that bring Speed Dial to Skype but it does not seem to be under development anymore - doe s not work with Snow Leopard.
http://www.nhandz.com/speeddial-mac.htm

Anyway what do you all think of the need for a better, easy to use interface for Senior Citizens and Visually Impaired?

Thanks
AmosDad

Sorry I can't try this myself just now (because I'm nowhere near my Mac), but you might experiment with the Mac's System Preferences. Specifically, open the Universal panel and enable the Seeing preferences. This might not be terribly intuitive, but the Mac is user friendly for the hearing and visually impaired. Please let us know if this fixes things for your dad.