Hi Dot,
This particular list is really intended for folks who belong to computer users
groups  for blind folks.  There are often questions about "screen readers"
which may be what you hopefully won't need.

These programs attempt to read information from any application  program
you are using.  They come in speech output, with magnifacation of many kinds
and both.  Also with braille output should you learn braille, but that
requires very expensive hardware.

Unfortunately the screen readers are quite expensive, costing from $500.00
to $700.00 or more.

The two biggest, neither of which I endorse are:
Jaws "Job Access with Speech"
from Freedom Scientific
http://www.FreedomScientific.com

and
Windoweyes from:
http://www.GWMicro.com

These two work with speech and braille.

The best known product for getting magnification is "magic"
from A squared electronics.

There are others.

The learning curve for these programs is very high.

You have to learn a huge set of keyboard commands to do things that you are
used to doing with a mouse.

But many blind, and low vision folks do well with these and other products.

Just Google
Screen readers

and find much more.

For reviews of these and similar computeiaccess products check
http://afb.org

That at least will get you started looking.

best luck

Tom Fowle
Embedded Systems Developer/ Rehab engineer
Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center
The Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute
2318 Fillmore St.
San Francisco, CA 94115
415-345-2123 (Voice)
Internet [log in to unmask]


VICUG-L is the Visually Impaired Computer User Group List.
To join or leave the list, send a message to
[log in to unmask]  In the body of the message, simply type
"subscribe vicug-l" or "unsubscribe vicug-l" without the quotations.
 VICUG-L is archived on the World Wide Web at
http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/vicug-l.html