I would highly recommend getting a laser, especially if she isn't doing a huge amount of printing. You can leave them forever without printing and they'll just spin up and work in an instant. Both B+W and color ones are really decently priced these days.
If she wants to print words or shapes on paper, then a laser printer is perfect. If non-photographic color is also useful, then a color laser printer is fine. They're happy with heavy usage, and ~zero usage, and everything in between. Brother is the answer here; they tend to be low-bullshit.
If she wants to print color photographs regularly and absolutely doesn't want to wait for them, then: Some manner of inkjet. Brother inkjets take care of themselves (as long as they're powered up) with a ~daily automated song-and-dance to help avoid the head-clogging issue that many other inkjets face, but even then it's a more fickle technology than laser printing is.
It's also important to compare the price/convenience of printing photos at home to having someone else do it. Buying high-quality prints (whether from online services that deliver by mail or from the local pharmacy or big box) can be cheaper and better quality than doing it at home, and make maintaining the printing machine someone else's problem.
(edit- I unintentionally left it to implication, but: If she wants to print color photographs only once or twice per year, then... she's probably way, way better off by not doing that at home. At all.)
I never had problems with Brother for laser and Canon for inkjet. The models I have are no longer being manufactured, so I can't recommend anything specific. I did my best to stay way from HP for inkjet, they always had bad rep.