Bill, Because your request for info is of general interest to all people losing or having lost their vision, I think it is worthwhile to post suggestions to the list. Each state has different agencies offering help to the blind, some offering more help than others. A city hall or librarian can help finding these agencies. Most local phone companies will provide free directory assistance with proof of blindness, so access to listings is generall available, though celphone companies, as far as I can see, do not provide this service, charging as much as .99 per request. Of course, there is the Talking Books program available through your state library redistributor for the LIbrary of Congress. Books are provided via cassette these dats, with a promised changeover to randomly accessible CD-ROm-like media sometime in the net 10 years. Players are provided by the participating library at no charge. AGain, verification of visual status (or disability) is required for participation. Another organization, Readings for the Blind and Dyslexic (RFBD) does make a one-time initial charge of $50. Their mission is to tape books not already covered by the Library of Congress Taking B ooks project. They use volunteer readers rather than professional readers like the Library of Congress, but you can get textbooks, technical works and less massmarket appeal readings. They will also read a book for you if you provide two copies, both of which are returned, at no charge (as far as I know). There is an annual fee of $25, very much worth the cost. The Library of Congress also provides through the Taling Books program such magazines as National Geographic, ATlantic MOnthly, American Heritage, National REview, Outdoor LIfe, The WRiter and many others, with new titles added each year. These are also frees, the requested magazines on cassette come to your door monthly via US mail. Most journals and many magazines are availalbe over the World Wide Web in plain text versions. A screen reder for your computer can read these articles aloud to you. The software is not free, but some states will pay for the license. Some states will provide computers and equipment. AGain, check with your local blind services agency. I should mention that most of these benefits are provided as part of a program to eitehr keep or gain employment. It takes time to learn the program, but it's worth it. Some other programs, like Open Book (Freedom Scientific) and Kurzweil 2000 can read a book to you by using a scanner to scan in the books pages and using Optical Character REading software to translate the scanned page image into readable text, which the software then does. There are also sites on the internet, like Project Gutenberg, which provide text versions of out of print books. These books were typed in by hand by volunteers over the last 20 years or so to preserve books from disappearing forever once they are no longer published. You can download these books for free and your screen reader can read them. There is no charge for this service but the managers of Project Gutenberg, all of whom are volunteers, will gladly accept contributions to provide new equipment and the like. There are other sites on the web that provide scanned-to-text versions of all kinds of things like historical documents. I am compiling a list of these and plan to put them up on a website one of these days. By the way, anyonw of who knows of sites that provide free access to full-text documents regionally and locally, please send a private email to me at [log in to unmask] Furtyher, Newsline is a national service that offers access to newspapers via the telephone in most of the country, with more newespapers added each month. Almost all the mamjor national newspapers (USA Today, NY Times, Washington Post, Washington Times, etc.) are available, as are the local big city and many mid-city newspapers. Look up Newsline on the internet for further details. If you are a member of the Talking Books program already and Newsline is available in your area, you are already eligible. If not, you'll need to provide proof of your impairment. Further, most newspapers will provide full texts of at least part of their content locally, which, again, can be read by your screen reader. Finally, I suggest seeking out blind people who are doing the things you'd like to do and get to know them. One of the best ways to do this is to join an organization fo blind folks. I belong to the National Federation fo the Blind but there are many more, all of whom provide mentoring and who include many, many dynamic and successful blind people who are very willing to share their strategies with you. If your sister would like to communicate with me, I'd happy to answer andy questions she may have and to provide more reverences to resources she might be interested in. She can reach me at the email cited int his post. Hope this helps. Blindness is certainly inconvenient. Losing vision can be vbery frightenning but it sure isn't the end of your life. There are so m any resources today and so many blind people are living full lives that the future is bright even for those who can't see hwo bright it is. Dan Flasar [log in to unmask]