That is why I do not consider speech to be a form of literacy. A person needs access to the word as a collection of letters rather than just as a single entity. That's not even considering things like sentance and paragraph structure, punctuation, usage, and mechanics. These things are important for both reading and writing. It is amusing then that this project I'm working on calls essentially for speech output with screen visuals being essentially an afterthought. Now for me, if you make the font big enough for what is displayed, I could still call it literacy. Of course, I intend to be wearing a blindfold when I test the software for anything but what's on the screen. Much of the list who likes the idea of emacspeak but can't seem to actually tollerate emacs on a regular basis would like my little project if and when it moves further along, I think. At this point I am trying to get myself an emacspeak speech server that isn't eflite. *shudder* I want quality speech I can actually stand to use, thank you! I've got one mostly finished for my Mac that uses the Macintalk API. As to the matters of literacy and what we must do to be both blind and successful, the philosophy I was raised with is not precisely that of the NFB, but it is mostly compatible with it. To your acquiantance who is losing his vision, I would say that it is important--crucial in fact--that he get some new glasses if he still can for the time being, but begin learning the skills to maintain his independence now, even if he doesn't quite need them yet. What could possibly be worse than to wake up one day and realize that over the years you've lost everything and now have to depend on other people for even the most basic things. I recently met such a man myself on a bus--he'd recently lost all of his vision and had gotten some rudimentary mobility training from the Oregon Commission for the Blind, but he was surprised to find that I lived in an apartment by myself. Don't I have a caretaker to cook, pick up after me, make sure the laundry is properly sorted, etc? I laughed and said, "Nah, I'm not married." Several women on the bus were quite amused by that, so I assume they are married. *smile* All I could do was give him a couple of bits of contact information. I don't know if he used them or not. Like the guy on the bus, your acquaintance has the choice to lose his freedom or to refuse to give it up. If you can sucessfully make him aware of that without alienating him in the process, I bet he will choose the latter option. The trick is how to do it without alienating him, and that is an answer I don't have since I don't know the guy. *grin* On Tue, Nov 22, 2005 at 08:13:54AM -0500, Janina Sajka wrote: > Yes, I do understand. I have myself observed my spelling grow from poor > to awful in the 30 or so years I've now lived since my last days with > print. > > I am these days chatting with an individual from the DC area LUG who's > losing sight. I'm trying to get him to be smart and think of how to > succeed with speech (and maybe a little braille) while he can still. > But, the guy isn't ready. He spends his time ranting about what isn't, > how the glasses aren't cutting it, etc., etc. -- "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act, but a habit." -- Aristotle _______________________________________________ Blinux-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/blinux-list