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?"

Comments

I know

[gustgr]

this is really nostalgic, but how about the old punched card or punched paper tape system ? That time you didn't get a display just a little printer and some paper to deal with, having a good vision wasn't really necessary to analyze that tiny holes.

Just use a bigger monitor?

[El]

Does this remind anybody else of the old Saturday Night Live routine where Gavin Morris translated everything Chevy Chase said "for the hearing impaired" by just shouting the same phrase out loudly?

Re:Tool..

[infornogr]

The joke's on them. He can't read the ad.

Braille display

[Nick of NSTime]

Tell him to look at a Braille display and see if it works out for him. Remind him to keep an eye open for good deals.