Need Help With Being Able to "Lock" an App on My Grandson's iPad

[rayroshi]

I am trying to figure out how to keep my autistic grandson from switching programs on his iPad, while at school. His iPad is used as a communications device (he can't talk), but he prefers to switch from the communications app (Proloquo2Go) to something more fun, such as a game or music. Can't blame him for that, but then he can no longer communicate with anyone at school and he doesn't know how to get back to the communications program. We just downloaded iOS6, and I know there is a way, with it, to somehow "lock" the program that we want him to use, preventing him from switching to another program; however, I don't know how to do that. Can anyone give me a hand with that? If so, please be aware that I need really explicit, step-by-step, instructions, because I'm not an iPad owner. For example, if you say something like, "Click on the Home button," I won't know which one that is, so I need to have my cyber hand held and to be walked through it in baby steps, lol! My son brought me instructions, given to him by a teacher, pursuant to doing this, and they seemed to be good right up to almost the last step--but then they no longer matched what I was seeing on the iPad, so I was at a dead end. I don't know where the teacher got them, but here they are: (I will just list the things to click, in sequence) 1. Settings, 2) "General," 3) "Accessibility," 4) "Guided Access," 5) Turn button to "On," 6) "Set Passcode," 7) Type in passcode, 8) Open the app that you want the child to use.....Here's where it all went to Hell in a handbag, for me. How do I open the app?...just go to the bottom of the screen, at the left, and tap on it?, 9) Push the "home" (the circle button at the bottom) three times...Again a problem. What "circle" button? What's a "circle" button, anyway?, "Read the instructions to 'circle areas on the screen you would like to disable, and make sure that the 'Hardware Buttons' is set to 'Always Off.'" Here we go again. I'm not seeing any instructions anywhere. What are they talking about, here?, 10) Push "Start" Where? I'm not seeing a "Start" button anywhere.

Well, anyway, I think you can see my problem. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Everything was easy to follow, right up to step 8, which is where the instructions were less than crystal clear

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[KevinJS]

Here's our thread on "Guided access" with an attendant warning.

The circle button is what is usually referred to as the Home button, as in the physical button at the bottom of the iPad.

Using "Guided Access".

[rayroshi]

Thank you for that reply. Now I know that the "circle button" is the home button, which definitely helps. However, when I went to the link which you provided, once again, it gave good instructions right up to almost the end, when it said, "Next, go to the app you want to lock into, triple tap the home button, accept the defaults and touch START."

Okay, so I set the password (twice), I then clicked on Proloquo2Go (the app that I want to lock)...and then was stuck again. What defaults am I supposed to accept, and is there something that I am supposed to do, in order to accept them? And where is START? I can see no START anywhere.

[KevinJS]

See this screenshot. Apologies for the quality of this one, but taking a screenshot doesn't work when the iPad is waiting for Guided Access input. This is a photograph of the iPad screen taken with my iPhone.





To get to this point you need to triple tap the home button after having enabled Guided Access.

Hope this helps.

Sent from my iPhone using iPF

[evohicks]

Just tried this and can confirm it works well. I probably will never use it but I am learning of new features all the time, nice feature for what it's intended for.

[rayroshi]

Thanks for sticking with me, Kevin; that did it. When you sent that pic, I realized that I wasn't even getting to the page where I was supposed to be, which made me suspect that the act of triple-pressing the Home button was the problem. My son had put a rubber cover over his iPad, so when I tried to triple-click on the Home button, that rubber case was getting in the way, and it wasn't really triple-clicking, so it wasn't taking me to the right page. When I peeled back the rubber cover and triple-clicked it, everywhere worked fine.

Thanks a million for taking the time and trouble to help. It was getting really frustrating for both our grandson and his teachers, to have Daniel (our grandson) go to school and lose the ability to communicate, because he had played around with the iPad settings. This will solve that problem.

You're a good'un!


--Ray Cole