How to setup an Android tablet for use by an older person I consider myself fairly competent with tech, but I am more of an Apple guy so I had very limited exposure to Android, so far, and my problem is that I want to set up an Android tablet (Acer Iconia 16GB, running Android 4.2.2) for usage by an older person (my mother).

For the time being she will only use Skype to communicate with relatives and friends.

How can I set up this so that it works basically as a single-purpose device?
Are there any utilities or apps I should install?
(For example I noticed that the font, even at the maximum size, may still give her problems- she will use Skype for voice/video only, so screen space for text is less important than being able to read messages and labels).

I am also worried that notifications (including the ones about patches/updates) may give her anxiety, at least at the start, so I'd like to know if it is possible to disable most of all of them.

If anyone has other suggestions for this use case, even if not explicitly mentioned in my question, please contribute. It's my first attempt at this so I may be missing a lot.
You would probably wanna:

-Setup a launcher like Nova Launcher (my personal favorite) solely to setup gestures for daily used tasks like calling and viewing SMSs.

-With Nova launcher change the icon size to maximum (130% i guess) to make icons more visible.

-Go to Accessibility and change the text size. Since it varies from manufacturer to manufacturer, the customizability may be different. Tinker around in the accessibility settings to find something useful. 

-Change ringtone, notification sound and alarm to something loud and distinct.

-Turn on Haptic FeedBack in Sound settings (varies from manufacturer to manufacturer again)

-De-clutter the home screen! May even want to sort them by folders (drag an app over the other)