gI think you've hit it right on the head--the blind are removed from the capitalist marketplace "for their own good." If we abolish the agencies, a lot of blind people would be left like fish flopping on the floor of a boat--having never been taught the principles nor given the power to compete, having been sheltered under the umbrellas of the agencies and special dispensations and charities, they have no clue what's out there, that it could work for them for less, that they could empower themselves instead of waiting for someone to give it to them. This is only part of my rant on why we need to completely reform the way blind people get access to technology. Having said that, I'm on the verge of accepting a training position with one such agency and will teach any and all of the products offered by the umbrella companies, so I guess I'm a hypocrite--but I'm also hungry and unemployed. That said, I recently built, from a junked PC desktop and various scrounged parts, and using SATOGO and an old version of XP, a functional computer for a blind friend; with it, he will then be able to claw himself up by his own shoelaces to a point where he can get a Mac or a better PC or a netbook or something--ut will he be able to afford Jaws? SaToGo is great, but you can't do everything with it-- yet. NVDA is open source, and if he teaches himself to script it, it's a;also an option--but it seems to me that if the agencies didn't exist, the blind would shape up and stop whining in no time. I'm one of those who kept saying, as the economy was bottoming out and programs were being cut left and right, that the various charities and agencies for the blind were going to be the first on the chopping block--if a worst collapse happens, as I feel it inevitably will, I think this *WILL* be the case--and what will the dependent blind do then I, too, got a lot of my equipment from agencies--because they're convenient and easy, once you know how to play the game; but that doesn't make it sound future planning, or even honorable.
Okay, rant over for now... Mark BurningHawk Baxter Skype and Twitter: BurningHawk1969 MSN: burninghawk1...@hotmail.com My home page: http://MarkBurningHawk.net/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MacVisionaries" group. To post to this group, send email to macvisionar...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en.
