I recommend you get the ipad mini or the regular sized ipad. My mom was previously a technological dinosaur and when we got her an iphone 5s we were not sure at all if she'd be able to use it. Now's she's pretty tech savvy with the darn thing LOL. In the setting you can set the default language to chinese (great for her, but when she needs help with something I can't read anything haha) You can also set the default text size to large and mind you my mom has pretty bad eyesight, she says it's lao hua, but she does fine with the iphone. Apple tablet screens are much bigger/spaced out so if you she can read her iphone screen your mom should do just fine with the tablet screen. All in all apple products are really simple to use and imo it's pretty intuitive since they're designed so that small children can use it (The majority of small kids I see using electronics are all using apple stuff... can't remember the last time i saw a 3 year old using an android
). I have an android tablet but I find navigation more complicated and sometimes redundant. Also... because my mom doesn't know pinyin theres an apple keyboard that allows her to draw each word in. She went from not being able to text on a dumb phone to being able to text all of her friends in chinese and check her mail etc.