WINDOWS 8.1 FOR SENIORS

I went round to see the Intrepids at lunchtime. My Dad has bought this book. It's called Windows 8.1 for Seniors.

There they are, the Seniors, having a whale of a time on their non-specific white laptop. They've obviously found something amusing on there - maybe Woman Falls Down Hole or Sneezing Panda or something and they want you to know how much fun they're both having. That's why they're looking right at you, instead of the screen.

"See, darling," says he resting his hand on her shoulder, "I told you it was easy!"

"No you didn't; you called it all 'new-fangled hocus pocus' and said you wished you still had a typewriter," she laughs, "Now get your hand off my hair or I'll be late for my judo lesson."

Now I'm not a senior, but I think this is all a bit insulting. First of all, it assumes that if you're a certain age you won't have the slightest clue what a computer is. Secondly, if a bit of technology has to be 'tailored' to a section of society to make it more accessible, then surely there is something wrong with it rather than them! Especially if 90% of us have been using Microsoft products for the last 30 years!

While I'm not a senior, what I am is a person who thinks about how usable software is as part of my job - it makes sense after all, the more naturally usable a thing is, the less I have to write about how to use it!

Now I agree, some aspects of Microsoft are as backward and baffling as a game of blind man's backgammon, but in general it should be pretty easy to figure it out - I mean they've even copied Apple's idea of huge colourful icons and touch screens and swiping and all that interactive malarkey! Those things aren't just there to look good - the design is supposed to guide you through the interface!

If it isn't naturally usable, if it can't be figured out by anyone at all over the age of 55 who's still continent enough to sit down at a generic white laptop, then listen up, silver surfers, you shouldn't be buying books called things like Microsoft for Idiots any more than you should be buying the latest copy of How To Tie Your Shoe Laces - Now with a Free Wallchart.

No! We should all be marching on Seattle with placards and burning torches demanding that this awful leviathan of a company actually does something accessible, easy and nice for a change instead of patronising old people. Oh, and if you don't think that this kind of thing is patronising and insulting, try reading the blurb and replacing the word 'seniors' with 'women' or 'left handed people' or in fact, any other group of people who didn't choose how and when they were born into this world.

I suppose we could email them, if any of us are still young enough to figure out how.