Editor,
As Heather Murtagh said in her Dec. 8 article "New technology aids the visually impaired,” much of the money comes from the state and indeed some of those braille readers can be very expensive and out of the range of the people who need them.
It’s a similar situation with video magnifiers for the visually impaired and items such as the pocket viewer often sell for around $750. Most other video magnifiers sell for many hundreds or even thousands of dollars. At the same time, we manufacture video magnifiers that start at less than $200 and so far as we know we sell more hand held video magnifiers than all of our competitors put together.
Here’s the interesting thing, many low vision resellers and organizations in the United States tell us that our product doesn’t have sufficient profit margin so they choose not to recommend it to the state or education authorities etc. Fortunately, the world’s leading blind organizations have a different opinion and we are slowly making inroads not only around the world but here in California, too.
Hopefully there will be a day when helping visually impaired people becomes the key issue and not just making a profit from the state funding system. Until then, many of America’s 13 million VIP’s will not be as fortunate as those in your article.
Ian Bierley
San Jose
The writer is the president of Bierley Associates, Inc
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