Last week I gave my old scanner to my brother to give to our friend Thair who is blind. I never realized she would find such a productive use for it. She has always been very self sufficient inspite of her blindness but sometimes she needs someone to help her with things such as reading her mail. This can be problematic since she lives alone (except for her guide dog Chadwick). Somtimes she has to wait several days for somone to come over and read it to her.
She emailed me yesterday (she’s a master of the keyboard, computer or piano) and I was delighted to hear she has employed my old scanner as a tool of liberation! Now using it, an optical character recognition program, and Dragon Naturally Speaking, She can read her own mail for the first time ever and any other scannable text! Before anything she read had to be in Brail.
All of her computer equipment and software was donated and has been put to far better use than it probably have been other wise.
I highly recommend donating any equipment you no longer need.