Peripherals for the Visually Impaired?

schmiddy asks: "My father, a self-proclaimed Internet junkie, recently lost most of his eyesight, but he can still see a bit out of his right eye (enough to read magnified text on a monitor, with a narrow field of view). As he spends a large amount of his time surfing the web and reading, he's been finding it hard to cope. I've seen a lot of cool toys out there for the rest of us, but can the Slashdot crowd recommend any special monitors, peripherals, or (preferably (F)OSS) text to speech or other software that would help? I think he would much rather continue reading the old-fashioned way than having to use a hack like a Braille output. Also, what about the idea of simply using a large TV screen as a computer monitor?"

Re:HDTV

[Naffer]

The problem lies in the fact that the dot pitch on HDTVs can often be pretty bad. I would definitly recommend a 20" LCD like the one that Dell has. Windows XP includes high-contrast themes to make reading easier as well as a magnifying glass.

Start low tech

[Bishop]

I have faced a similar challenge. The very sad state of affairs is that a large high quality magnifying glass coupled with a good monitor beat all the other "solutions" I tried. Useing the magnifying glass was frustrateing for the user, but they kept comming back to the it.

I have found that text based tools can work better then GUI based. With text based tools it is easier to blow up the font to 2 inch high letters (and larger). This works well with a minimal window manager with no overlapping windows like ion or ratpoison. GUIs tend to waste too much screen space, especially when you increase the font size. With a magnifying glass the buttons and icons don't need to be huge.

Simple software with few dialogs and popups, and a consistent behaviour is key. My partially sighted client tends to use keyboard navigation and short cuts. They navigate throught the windows and screens from memory. For example to send an email they type: ALT-N "recipient" TAB "subject" TAB "message" CTRL-ENTER.

A single randomly occuring bug is devistateing. I found early versions of MS outlook express to be particularly bad at not always returning to the same state after a given action. The focus caret would sometimes move between the folder list and the email list. This was not a problem I noticed until my client complained.

When helping a partially sighted users continually ask how the display can be better. As a sighted person you really don't know what they need to be able to better read and interact with the computer. Little things like serif, sans serif, or monospaced fonts can make a big difference. As can colours and contrast.

Ofcourse remember that this experience is far more frustrateing for them then it is for you.