Blind

• The first thing that's important to understand is that even though a person may legally qualify as blind, that doesn't mean that they have no usable vision. Many people who are legally blind have 20/200 vision (meaning they can see an object from 20 feet away with the same clarity that a person with regular eyesight could see from 200 feet away), or they have only 20 degrees of vision (whereas most people have 180 degrees of vision, including peripheral vision). Others are actually blind and have no vision what so ever, but every blind person will need some variety of technology to interact with and use a standard computer.
  
  

Magnification Programs

• For those people who are legally blind, but who do have some eyesight, a computer program called a screen magnifier may be the answer. The name of the software program is fairly self explanatory, as a screen magnification program can enlarge a screen and all the information on it up to 36 times its original size. This program can perform this function on anything a computer displays, because it affects how it shows up on the screen. However, for many blind people (even those who have some usable vision) the better options lie in screen reading programs.
  
  

Screen Readers

• The other option, and the only option for those with no vision, is to use a screen reader program. These programs work through audio headphones, reading the content on a computer screen to a blind person. They still have to memorize the layout of a keyboard though, so that they can type the commands into the computer. Screen reading programs do have a bit of a problem with the sheer variety of content and the page setup of the Internet, but they can display and read other programs such as word processor documents just fine.