Frank,

I have been running the Icom 7000 since November of 2008.  I was having some 
neurological problems at the time and about the time I started learning how 
to run the rig, I ended up in the hospital having neck surgery.  It took a 
lot of courage to go back and start from the bottom up with the radio and 
with nothing more than a MS Word copy of the manual to help.  The Icom 7000 
is not a blind friendly radio in my opinion.  You access 90 percent of 
everything by entering menus when pressing a button.  Lot of things beep and 
double beep when pressed so that helps but the speech is restricted to 
frequencies, channels preprogrammed, the modes available, and signal 
strength.  In short, a blind guy better have a pretty good memory or take a 
lot of notes.  However, recently I found Icom software by N4PY that appears 
to be worth the 75 dollars.  I have talked with him personally and he has 
given me a list of hot keys he has built in to the control software.  I have 
not gotten it yet but it is next on my list.  The Icom 7000 receiver turned 
me on big time.  I have been a ham since age 14 in April of 1966 so I have 
run tube rigs all the way up the line to these fancy computerized radios. 
Frankly, I would buy, for a blind ham, one of the Kenwoods like even the 
TS590 you hear guys talking about on here.  I don't think the Icom 7000 is 
made any longer.  I worked 36 states and 3 countries the first year I had 
this rig on 6 meters.  I enjoy the 2 meter band on it as well and for an old 
CW operator, I have never fiddled with a better receiver for the money.  I 
wish this rig would have been available a long time ago because the learning 
curved wouldn't have been so bad if I were younger.  I also bought the QSY 
ER and I can almost control all of what I use on the radio from the separate 
keypad but microphone gain and other such things are hard to get to because 
they are in menus, or submenus, and you have to press different buttons to 
get to those settings, speech doesn't work in the menu settings, and I'm no 
kid any more.  If you can get a use 7000 for like 500 or 600 dollars and 
then buy the QSY ER from, I forget the guy who makes them, and if you want 
to interface using the N4PY control software, you will have a ball.  I'm 
mostly a CW operator so the phone settings and adjustments don't bother me 
so much but a guy or gal does like to know their radio.  Go with whatever 
you can get the most help with while learning.  If you like CW, so much the 
better, and in that case, consider some of the Ten Tec rigs.  Kenwood seems 
to have a corner on the market, though, for the blind ham.

Phil.
K0NX