Is Your Low Vision Screen Magnifier and Reader USB Drive Truly Portable?

This difference may not seem much but it makes a huge impact when you are a person with vision disability. Have you ever had to check your email or surf the web at a computer other than your own? At a hotel, library, school, co-workers or family members computer? Most low vision screen magnifiers today offer a USB version, but all of them need administrative privileges to install some software before they can run. Odds are if you're using a public computer, you won't be granted installation rights. Moreover, a computer can be a very personal possession and others won't appreciate you installing software on it. This is why checking if the screen magnifier and reader USB drive can be used any where is very important and thus the importance of the difference between - device that can be carried anywhere v/s devices that can be used anywhere

If you want a Screen Magnifier and Reader software that you can carry with you everywhere, here are 3 important points to check for to get your money's worth-

1) Does it magnify your computer screen and read it as well- There are some products that only magnify your computer screen, you will find that for the same price there are products that do both magnification and reading.

2) Is your text smooth when you magnify it- After 3X magnification level the texts starts to get blocky, so test what magnification level works for you.

3) The USB Just works- Plug the Screen Magnifier and Reader USB drive into a computer/laptop if you can start the magnification software without installation/any download- It's TRULY portable

Some other portable products for people with visual impairment are:

Lamps and Magnifiers: Lamps helps you brighten your text and magnifiers will help enlarge the print. Magnifiers are portable but very basic they can only magnify a small part and do very limited things. In the magnifier the point is to focus your attention through the lens, the same way you look through eyeglasses. If you normally wear glasses, you may want to keep them on. A magnifier does not correct for astigmatism.

Electronic Magnifiers: This is an advanced form of magnification.Electronic magnifiers can change the color, zoom into the text you want to read e.g if you go shopping and want to read the calorie count on the box you can take a snap shot using the electronic magnifier then change the color and text size to meet your requirements

Large Print Calculators: These large print calculators have bigger text and can speak the numbers punched aloud. They are good for students as they do both regular and graphic calculations

Text to Speech Software: This software helps you use the computer, once you download the software you simply have to click on any web page/email/document to read it aloud.

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