Tom, My friend, I could not agree with you more on this one. One of my concerns is that, should we experience some sort of major power failure there are going to be thousands of blind people in a world of hurt because they will be dead without their electronic gizmos. (LOLLOLLOL) While managing to compose school work was a royal pain when I was in High School and college at least I knew how to spell and punctuate. In high school we had to learn to dissect and diagram sentences and that, my friend, was a genuine challenge. The final test on that was the Preamble to the Constitution. As I recall the finished product looked more like a Brillo pad than anything else. Cy, The Anasazi From: jfw-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:jfw-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Tom Lange Sent: Wednesday, October 20, 2010 10:28 AM To: jfw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: Re: the Personal Computer was the greatest thing ever invented for the Blind Hi, I've used Optacons since 1978, when I was hired by IBM as a programmer trainee. The Optacon was the only way that I could read my 3270 display terminal at the time; the Talking Terminal wouldn't read the APL characters that I used to write code. I agree with the statement that the Optacon really helped me to see how things are laid out both on paper and on screen, which is a huge help. While screen readers have been a godsend, I have definitely noticed a decline in blind people's ability to spell the written word, and I blame this on the de-emphasis on Braille in our educational system. It appalls me that only 10 percent of blind people in the U.S. read Braille, and, if it were up to me, I would make Braille education mandatory, unless it could be demonstrated that a student has a physical limitation that prevents him/her from reading Braille. 90 percent Braille illiteracy is, to my mind, nothing short of obscene. You can talk about lack of manpower to properly teach it, lack of funding, et cetera et cetera, but what that says to me is that there's a callous disregard by the government for the literacy of blind people in this country, and that makes me furious. Surely I can't be the only one who feels this way. Tom