Screen viewing by old eyes

[FatBear]

During the ten months we waited for the car (Model Y) to be delivered, my wife had some medical problems with her eyes and now that the car has arrived she cannot read the display. Actually, she can read it with special glasses, but she cannot see the road while wearing those glasses. Since it was supposed to be her car, we have a problem.

I can think of two options. One, we can sell it. It has 101 miles on it right now and I have been told we could probably get more than we paid for it. Or we can find some way that she can deal with the screen viewing issue. Frankly, I was intending to keep driving my old beater pickup, which will probably outlive me, but I like this Tesla so much that I hope we can keep it so I can drive it when she is not using it.

I am very new to this car, so please be patient if there is something obvious that I have missed.

So is it possible to enlarge what you see on the screen, or at least the fonts?

Are there alternative "themes" or such that can be installed? Or is it possible for us to modify the layout, ourselves? Some things would be much easier to use if they just looked different without a change of size. The radio controls, for example, occupy about the same square inches on the screen that they do in her old car. But most of that is just white space surrounding little tiny icons. I'm sure someone thinks it is stylish in some bizarre way, but a visual cue to the edges of the buttons, perhaps with "shadows" to make them look like buttons, and slightly larger icons would make them much easier to see and push.

Is it possible to control the car by voice rather than finding and pushing "buttons" on the screen? How do we learn about that? (I thought there would be an owner's manual in that Tesla App; but if there is, I cannot find it.)

If all else fails, what is the best way to go about selling a brand new car like this? With minimal hassles. We hate buying and selling. I am driving my third Toyota pickup since 1980 and my wife's old car (which we kept, thankfully!) is a 2000 Toyota. And is it reasonable to expect to get our money back? A friend who owns one Model Y and has another on order tells me that I should post it at a high price and ask for offers over that. Sounds bizarre to me, but pretty much everything about the world we currently live in is becoming bizarre.

Thanks, --Brian

 

[jjrandorin]

So is it possible to enlarge what you see on the screen, or at least the fonts?

No, there isnt

Are there alternative "themes" or such that can be installed? Or is it possible for us to modify the layout, ourselves? Some things would be much easier to use if they just looked different without a change of size

No, no real customization, themes or anything.

Is it possible to control the car by voice rather than finding and pushing "buttons" on the screen? How do we learn about that? (I thought there would be an owner's manual in that Tesla App; but if there is, I cannot find it.)

You can do most things by voice. There isnt a list of voice commands, just like there isnt a list of voice commands for a modern smartphone at this point. You sort of just have to try changing something by voice command with fairly natural speech.

Things like "Set the AC to 70 Degrees" or "navigate to the nearest Albertsons grocery store", etc.

There isnt a way to change font sizes, and people have been asking about that for a while. Allowing the user to change the font size would also need to come with allowing the user to change the layout of the screen to match. Tesla does not seem interested in either one of those things so I wouldnt hold my breath on either of those being a thing you will be able to do in the future either.

Same with themes (with the exception of dark mode).

Here are some other threads on this general topic, just so you know you are not alone, but so far is unlikely to change, as this goes back to at least 2018 when I got my own model 3. These are in the model 3 subforum but its the same screen an interface, so relevant here as well:

Larger Font

I don't know about everyone else but I could do with some larger numbers. Driving back from Bournemouth last night and was heading to Fleet (M3 northbound) for a top-up I was struggling to read the distances & times on the sat-nav at a glance, that also goes for battery remaining percentage...

teslamotorsclub.com

Large type (font)

Hi, I'm new to this forum. Is this the best place to post "wish list" items? I wear bi-focals and the have a dead zone just about where the screen is on our model 3. it would sure be great if we could adjust the font size for many or all of the functions on the screen. I can't read the time...

teslamotorsclub.com

Small Screen Font on UI

Why is the font so freaking small on the UI (Temp, Time, etc...). Also, sometimes there are words/locations on the map that are right under the clock and you can't read it! Why can't we adjust the font size??? Since I am near sighted, I have to remove my glasses to read it while driving. It...

teslamotorsclub.com

Increasing Font Size on Screen?

Some of us need a larger font size on the screen, so we don't need to drive with reading glasses or bifocals. Is there a way to change the font size? Seems like an easy fix....or update..

teslamotorsclub.com

Is the adjustable screen coming or not?

There was quite a bit of consternation since the screen's real estate was changed in the last update: what used to be a generously sized map combined with a reasonably wide info area on the left has turned into a cramped map and way too large info section whose way too small font and symbols...

teslamotorsclub.com

Why doesn't Mod3 user interface make reading alerts easier?

My peripheral vision isn't as good as it was years ago. Maybe it was never great. I know I'm not alone in this. I wear my computer glasses down on my nose, and that works just fine. But much as I LOVE my Model 3 I find the alerts unfathomably poorly done, and I can't help questioning the UI's...

teslamotorsclub.com

 

[cosmith71]

In the app, the manual is under "Service". You can also find it online at Model Y Owner's Manual | Tesla .

I don't think there is a way to enlarge the fonts. The controls on the steering wheel can control the radio. You also might check into "S3XY Buttons" which are physical buttons that can be mapped to a lot of functions and stuck wherever you like. S3XY Buttons

 

[cosmith71]

Oh, and the S3XY buttons come with a phone app that you can use as a speedometer. It might be easier to read than the touchscreen.

 

[FatBear]

I have tried giving the car voice commands, but with zero results. That's why I was wondering if there were instructions or if it must be turned on. Maybe it's just me. My dog doesn't obey most of my commands and my wife delivers pretty much the same results as the car.

Those buttons certainly look very interesting. Unfortunately they are currently out of stock for the newer model years. I will show them to her and see if she wants to wait to give them a try, but I'm betting the answer will be no. Her current car is in pretty bad condition and now she has to keep it out in the hot sun because the Model Y is in the garage. We really need to either adapt this car or get rid of it and get her something she can drive.
I just wish they would forget the stupid marketing and sell plain buttons without the letters embossed into them. Once you spread them around the S3XY schtick disappears and you are left wtih buttons that have a letter which doesn't match the assigned function. That seems confusing. Though the black-on-black letters would probably be pretty much invisible to her.

I don't think the dashboard on the phone thing is going to be helpful, though. The current speed readout on the Tesla screen is about the only thing she can read on it and it is well positioned and usable.

 

[FatBear]

Thanks for telling me where to find the manual. Under "Service" was not intuitive. I looked up the voice commands and it seems that I need to poke a button on the steering wheel before giving a command. (An actual button! ) I just tried it out and they work pretty well. I will show it to my wife when she gets home and see if it helps her. Hopefully that, plus some of those programmable buttons when they are available, will change her mind about the car. Because right now she is pretty unhappy about it.

 

[JNM67]

I have tried giving the car voice commands, but with zero results. That's why I was wondering if there were instructions or if it must be turned on. Maybe it's just me. My dog doesn't obey most of my commands and my wife delivers pretty much the same results as the car.

Those buttons certainly look very interesting. Unfortunately they are currently out of stock for the newer model years. I will show them to her and see if she wants to wait to give them a try, but I'm betting the answer will be no. Her current car is in pretty bad condition and now she has to keep it out in the hot sun because the Model Y is in the garage. We really need to either adapt this car or get rid of it and get her something she can drive.
I just wish they would forget the stupid marketing and sell plain buttons without the letters embossed into them. Once you spread them around the S3XY schtick disappears and you are left wtih buttons that have a letter which doesn't match the assigned function. That seems confusing. Though the black-on-black letters would probably be pretty much invisible to her.

I don't think the dashboard on the phone thing is going to be helpful, though. The current speed readout on the Tesla screen is about the only thing she can read on it and it is well positioned and usable.

Not sure if I am stating something you already know, but you have to press the right scroll wheel on the steering wheel in to have the car listen for a voice command.

 

[cosmith71]

The out of stock ones are for the S and X, and the 6 button pack for the Y. You could get the 4 pack and add a couple of extra buttons and pay a little more. @dimitar.ns on this board is the founder and CEO of the manufacturer, Enhance, and is very helpful and responsive. Maybe he could even get you a set of buttons without the logo on them (I don't care for the logo, either).

At any rate, good luck with whatever you decide to do.

 

[Not4me]

Have you considered adding a corrective screen over the LCD panel suitable for your wife sight, but removable for when you drive.

 

[FatBear]

Have you considered adding a corrective screen over the LCD panel suitable for your wife sight, but removable for when you drive.

It crossed my mind, then I realized that it would either prevent touch inputs or it would optically "reposition" them so the car wouldn't do what she thought she was pushing.

 

[FatBear]

In looking through those links to earlier threads, I came across a complaint about the screen not angling. I figured this sounded like the kind of accessory that someone is probably making and did some searching. Sure enough, you can replace the rigid mounting bracket with a ball & socket swivel that allows you to angle the screen towards you. I have no idea if this would be enough, but I bet it would at least help my wife to some extent. I am going to show it to her when she comes home and see what she says. Problem is, once we start modding the car it might not be worth the "still brand new" price that it is right now, so we'd have to be sure we wanted to keep the car.

 

[Watts_Up]

my wife had some medical problems with her eyes and now that the car has arrived she cannot read the display. Actually, she can read it with special glasses, but she cannot see the road while wearing those glasses. Since it was supposed to be her car, we have a problem.

I wonder if there will be a similar problem with other cars for reading the speedometer or other information?

Does her DMV license ID indicate "Rstr Corrective Lens" so she have to wear either contacts or glasses when driving?

If she don't need glasses to drive, can she put her correctives glasses at the tip of her nose, so by lowering her head she can see the road,
and by moving up her head she can look at the dashboard.

Otherwise if she needs different glasses for driving and reading, does bi-focal or progressive lenses could be a possibility?

Note: In the case of contacts, I know some people who use one eye for long distance and the other eye for reading
or use LASIK surgery for getting a different correction for each eye.

 

[sleepydoc]

Sorry to hear about your wife’s vision problems.

As others have said, there is unfortunately no way to increase the font size. I’ve seen many complaints about this and there’s not a small number of people who think the UI designers were stoned when they came up with the latest version of the UI but either way there’s not a great solution right now.

As others have pointed out, you can purchase things like the S3XY buttons or an auxiliary dashboard to help, but those don’t fix the fact that fundamentally the car is a poor fit for your wife.

Are there other cars with which she would do better, or do her difficulties apply to most/all cars? If it’s not an option for you to drive the Tesla and for her to drive your current car I think selling it would be the best route.

As far as how to sell it, you can check on trading it in for the car she chooses to replace it, sell it online privately or sell it to a reseller like carvana.

 

[FatBear]

I'm actually worried about whether there is a better car for her. She has been driving her Solara for 20 years now and can probably drive it blindfolded. But I have ridden in a few Uber cars this week and have queried the drivers about their dash boards, buttons/switches, and computer screens. Ironically, the Camry that I rode in yesterday seemed very well thought out. Driving information was in front of the driver and info/nav stuff was in the center of the dash. And there were lots of buttons and switches.

Tesla is brilliant in that they could not produce a car with good EV range within an "affordable" price range unless they eliminated an awful lot of moving parts. If you think about all of the parts that go into making just one switch and then think about all the knobs and switches in a typical luxury car, it is easy to see that by eliminating almost all of them, Tesla was able to put more of the dollars that we spend on a car towards the batteries and drivetrain and computing/AI that make their cars possible.

And I promise you that every single car manufacturer out there is aware of that. I bet it won't be long before almost all high end and EV cars are similarly equipped. Hopefully some of them will be more considerate of their customers and make the screens a bit more adjustable for people whose eyesight is not that of the 30 year olds who designed the Model Y. In my reading I have come across some opinions where Musk seems to feel (pretty strongly it would seem) that he can hardly wait for all of the old people to die off and get out of his way. What he, with all his high IQ and immense ego, has apparently not realized is that we weren't born the way we are and that he is going to be like us some time all too soon. But he is not alone. Nobody really realizes what old age is like until they get there. And they have no idea what naive children they appear to be to us.

 

[sleepydoc]

I'm actually worried about whether there is a better car for her.

That may be the real question and requires significant thought. Ultimately only she can answer it.
’
In your wife’s case one significant advantage that other cars may have is that traditional controls don’t move or change with a software update. Having everything on a touchscreen allows for updates and improvements (and degredations.) It also means the interface can change significantly as it did several months ago, much to the confusion and consternation of Tesla owners. Even if she has trouble reading the labels, your wife can learn the physical controls and not worry about them changing.

 

[ElectricAnt54]

are progressive lenses an option for driving? You can design a transition from distance prescription to near in one lenses…bottom portion is near focus. I tend to look down and to the right when viewing the touchscreen.

 

[Watts_Up]

are progressive lenses an option for driving? You can design a transition from distance prescription to near in one lenses…bottom portion is near focus. I tend to look down and to the right when viewing the touchscreen.

See my posting above #12, does this person needs prescription glasses both for driving and reading or only reading?

 

[FatBear]

See my posting above #12, does this person needs prescription glasses both for driving and reading or only reading?

Younger eyes have issues with magnification. Some people are nearsighted, some farsighted. Many need simple correction but the eyes still have a long focusing range. After about 40 our lenses start to stiffen up and our range decreases. It's called presbyopia (sp?) and everyone gets it. That's when you start needing things like reading glasses, computer glasses, driving glasses, bifocals, or varifocals (like I wear), etc. Those are a hassle, but normal and we all deal with them if we want to be able to do certain things.

But there are other eye problems that can develop which are not so simple to deal with. My wife had cataract surgery in both eyes. One of the lenses that they inserted turned out to be the wrong power. The other one got kinked and pushed the cornea out of shape. They fussed with that one, but it left a mess. She had Lasik surgery which helped quite a bit, but she is still left with one eye with a positive correction, the other with a negative correction and nasty astigmatism. She can still see her cell phone with corrective lenses, so she's not blind or anything. But it does require concentration. The brain is an amazing image processor and she can suss the meaning out of the blur. But it takes focus and she can't see detail very well at a glance. She still passes the eye exam and still drives as well as she ever did, but her vision is sufficiently distorted that she cannot read the screen without leaning over and concentrating on it. Unfortunately, most of the distortion is in her right eye which is the one that looks most directly at the screen. The left eye ended up with good distance vision and that's why she can drive.

She has been through a lot of things to try and correct this problem - it didn't just crop up when we got the Tesla, though it was not a problem when we ordered the car. It is probably one of those things that she will have to live with for the rest of her life. Old age is like that. You tend to get more and more problems and the odds are that some of those will be intractable.

Or maybe Elon will quite goofing around with Twitter and politics and invent a replacement eyeball.

 

[Fourdoor]

The out of stock ones are for the S and X, and the 6 button pack for the Y. You could get the 4 pack and add a couple of extra buttons and pay a little more. @dimitar.ns on this board is the founder and CEO of the manufacturer, Enhance, and is very helpful and responsive. Maybe he could even get you a set of buttons without the logo on them (I don't care for the logo, either).

At any rate, good luck with whatever you decide to do.

I got the 6 button pack, and the two extra didn't have a letter logo on them, so they do make blank buttons.

Keith

 

[Fourdoor]

I wonder if there will be a similar problem with other cars for reading the speedometer or other information?

Does her DMV license ID indicate "Rstr Corrective Lens" so she have to wear either contacts or glasses when driving?

If she don't need glasses to drive, can she put her correctives glasses at the tip of her nose, so by lowering her head she can see the road,
and by moving up her head she can look at the dashboard.

Otherwise if she needs different glasses for driving and reading, does bi-focal or progressive lenses could be a possibility?

Note: In the case of contacts, I know some people who use one eye for long distance and the other eye for reading
or use LASIK surgery for getting a different correction for each eye.

My cousin had cataracts, and had replacement lens surgery. They asked him if he wanted perfect up close vision, perfect distance vision, or one eye of each. He chose perfect up close vision in both eyes, and used glasses if he needed to drive.

Keith