25 September 2009

After catching up with my backlog of e-mails I had a home visit from a very nice member of the AbilityNet team – Jodie Parkes. This was so much more satisfactory than the ‘remote assist’ telephone conference which I had previously. Jodie was very quickly able to assess my limitations and future needs.

He was able to recommend an updated laptop with a much larger ram and the next version of my voice activation programme, Dragon Preferred 10, with which he assured me I will be able to do much more than with my present version, particularly, as he is also recommending a gooseneck microphone which he tells me is far more sensitive, and less directionally dependent, then the one built-in to my present laptop.

I gave Jodie the vertical lever mouse to return to AbilityNet, which frankly I had never really used. He also took away the Sony E-reader as he is going to try to have this replaced with one of the more sophisticated Kindle e-reader, coming out towards the end of this year.

What is so amazing about all of this is that AbilityNet will purchase and give me this equipment, on permanent loan as long as I live, at absolutely no cost to me. How different from the government social services where one is mean tested for almost anything other than the most basic piece of equipment. What an amazing charity. I must see what I can do for them, at some stage.