Government rehabilitation programs can be stingy about providing computer gear that might even the score. Yvonne Singer, whose speech is hindered by cerebral palsy, pecks words and commands on a keyboard with a pointer strapped to her forehead. She has edited Web pages for a pharmaceutical company and posted poetry on her own Web site while searching for full-time work and pursuing a master's degree online. Likewise, the Web enables William Skawinski, a New Jersey Institute of Technology professor who is blind, to download scholarly articles onto his PC, where software converts the text to speech. Years ago, he had to rely on others to read to him.
Every new technology poses new barriers for the blind.
The PC arena has proven especially vexing for the blind, largely because of Microsoft's dominant Windows operating system. Chong works closely with Microsoft, and says it's possible to navigate Microsoft Word with keyboard commands instead of a mouse. Intuit's QuickBooks, on the other hand, is useless to the blind, he says. The Web has plenty of barriers, too. Other estimates vary widely.