I'm a retired physicist born with high myopia and 20:70 vision that began
deteriorating five years ago in my right eye from myopic degeneration (which
occurred around sixty years ago in my left eye).  As a result I've been
totally blind for a year and began Braille lessons in January.

  I'm writing to ask if there's any device on the market at a reasonable
price that could serve to tell me quickly which side of a sheet of paper is
printed so that I can put it on my scanner the right way on my first try.  I
imagine it could resemble a penlight, emitting a tone whose loudness or
pitch would indicate the level of gray it's pointed at.

  It might even emit three different tones if it could sense red, green, and
blue to indicate the color it sees as an aid in sorting clothes.  But
monochrome perception should be quite enough for determining whether the
material to be scanned is laid out in a single column or many, in finding
out whether an attempt at printing out a file had been successful, etc.

Nelson Blachman, Oakland, Calif.


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