BoldContacts
BoldContacts™ is a mobile app to help you browse your contacts and connect with them. BoldContacts is especially good for people who experience vision disabilities, or cognitive disabilities, or motor disabilities.
The app displays each contact with a big photo, big font, and big buttons. The phone button means "contact this person now". This button connects you by using your choice of video, or phone, or email, or message, or custom URL. A caregiver can customize this by using the Apple iOS Contacts app. Arrow buttons mean "show the previous contact" and "show the next contact".
Why is BoldContacts free?
BoldContacts is free because we want to help as many people as possible. BoldContacts exists because our family members have Alzheimer's Disease and Parkinson's Disease. BoldContacts is built to help them keep in touch with family, friends, and caregivers.
We are actively seeking help spreading the word about BoldContacts, so more people can hear about it, and more people can try it. If you want more information about this, or can help, please contact Joel Parker Henderson at joel@boldcontacts.org.
Setup & Personalization
The first time you launch BoldContacts, you will see an Apple iOS prompt that asks for you to approve this access. Say yes.
You can personalize how your BoldContacts app connects to your contacts. For example, you can choose whether BoldContacts will call a telephone number, or initiate a FaceTime video connection, or connect to any other service of your choice.
- Launch your typical Apple Contacts app. Find the contact that you want to personalize. Tap the edit button.
- Create a new contact field, such as for a phone number, or email address, or URL address. Edit the new field label to be "BoldContacts", and the field value to be whatever you want.
- The next time you launch BoldContacts, the app will load your contact's new information, and use your contact's new field.
Music & Movies
The app can connect to music and movies, such as via YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Prime Video, and Google TV.
Potential music connections include favorite songs, albums, playlists, genres, and streaming radio stations. Potential movie connections include blockbuster movies on Amazon Prime Video, family home movies that are uploaded to YouTube, and streaming TV channels.
Health & Wellness
The app can connect to health and wellness videos, such as for appropriate exercise, occupational therapy, and medical recovery.
Potential health and wellness connections include senior-oriented exercises, impairment-aware activities, chair yoga, tai chi, balance training, range-of-motion stretching, and the like.
For Medical & Clinical
The app can connect to medical providers and clinical researchers by using telemedicine conferencing, such as via Zoom, Teams, and Jitsi.
Potential medical connections include doctors, nurses, and outpatient follow up providers, all of whom may be able to use telemedicine to help support in-person medical care. Some ideas for clinical researchers include laboratory primary investigators who want patients to check in about updates to studies.
Worldwide Languages
The app provides many worldwide languages. We welcome help improving the phrasings and translations, and adding more languages and examples.
The app includes Afrikaans, Amharic, Arabic, Armenian, Assamese, Azerbaijani, Bangla, Basque, Belarusian, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese, Corsican, Croatian, Danish, Dutch, English, Esperanto, Finnish, French, Galician, German, Greek, Gujarati, Hawaiian, Hebrew, Hindi, Hmong, Icelandic, Igbo, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Javanese, Kannada, Khmer, Korean, Lao, Latin, Lingala, Lithuanian, Malay, Maori, Marathi, Meiteilon, Nepali, Norwegian, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Punjabi, Quechua, Russian, Samoan, Sanskrit, Scots Gaelic, Shona, Slovenian, Swahili, Swedish, Tamil, Telegu, Thai, Turkish, Turkmen, Ukrainian, Urdu, Uyghur, Uzbek, Vietnamese, Welsh, Xhosa, Yiddish, Yoruba, Zulu.
More about worldwide languages
Goals
Right now, BoldContacts is simple. In the future, our goals include adding capabilities as we learn more about what people want and need.
Goals for cognitive areas include helping people who experience memory loss, mental difficulties, confusion, and the like.
Goals for motor areas include helping people who experience arthritis, nerve damage, reflex tremor, and the like.
Goals for vision areas include helping people who experience partial vision, double vision, blurred vision, and the like.
For carers & caregivers
If you are helping someone with BoldContacts, here are ideas that may be helpful for you. In our experience, a carer can help set up BoldContacts, and help show the caree how to use it.
If the person likes seeing photos, then the carer can use the typical iOS Contacts app to add photos to contacts.
If the person feels they have too many contacts, then the carer can use the typical iOS Contacts app to delete any unneeded contacts.
If the person has difficulty holding a phone or tablet, then the carer can utilize a third-party accessory, such as a table-top stand, or a desk clamp mount, or wheelchair gooseneck connector.
Help Wanted
Contact the author at joel@joelparkerhenderson.com.
Are you experiencing disabilities? How can we help you?
Are you a carer? How can we support you, as you support others?
Are you a patron? Can we talk with you about grants and fundraising?
Are you a programmer? Would you like to help us with Swift and Kotlin?
Organizations we want to reach
Alzheimer’s Foundation of America
American Parkinson's Disease Association
Davis Phinney Foundation For Parkinson's
Muscular Dystrophy Association
National Multiple Sclerosis Society
The Michael J. Fox Foundation - Parkinson's
Medical introductions
Age-related macular degeneration