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HP41c Memories

Posted by Mike O'Regan on 29 Jan 2001, 6:18 p.m.

I had a couple of CASIOs before buying my first 41c. When I realised that the BEEP function had implications for BLIND users, I contacted HP to see if anyone had done such work. Surprisingly, nobody had thought about it. I set to work and devised TWO programs to enable blind people to "read" the display at anytime, using the TONE/BEEP function. The two programs were at different levels of difficulty. The simple one just BEEBed the number of each digit (with a special TONE for decimal point and SCI). The second one used ALL the normal TONEs. It was quicker, but required a short training period. With this in mind, I devised a simple Hi-Lo game for the blind user to train with. Everything worked fine and HP accepted the programs into their Software Library (whatever happened to THAT!). I later heard that my programs were helping blind students in the States, as talking calculators had not yet arrived on the scene, and, when they did, they were only simple four function jobs, whereas my programs could make the full power of the HP41c available to blind people.

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