I gave my grandma (who’d never used a computer before) an iPad for christmas. She still doesn’t use it much (just email really) but she grasped the direct touch interaction straight away. Swipes as well were fine - there’s a direct feedback model where if you start dragging a webpage it animates during the process.

Where she has difficulty is understanding what you’d use the net for (“You can get recipes on the internet?”). She needed it though - her current way of getting information is Teletext (UK-wide information system built into analogue TV broadcasts). That gives her weather, stocks+shares, TV listings and news, but is being turned off next year when they turn off analogue broadcasts to free up spectrum space. Digital terrestrial TV has the 'red button' info system but it contains dramatically less information.