As a sighted person, it is difficult for me to comprehend the sheer terror of what it means to lose one's eyesight in this technomobile world. I can intellectually comprehend it, but can only feel it through observing the struggles of others not so blessed.

I have examples to refer to. Now 89, my former school principal uncle Dave, a proud, well-read man - can see little more than shadows. My long-time buddy Jim, a man with a technological bent, a Master's Degree and several books to his name, can barely make out the shadows. And when I last heard from my now-former girlfriend Mary a little over a year ago, she was worried how long she could continue driving before a chronic visual deterioration made that unwise, if not impossible. Irony... she's an occupational therapist for severely orthopedically impaired schoolchildren.

All three of these people embrace technology, but have great difficulty using it. Because handset screens are smaller and achieve lower-res than enhanced-display PC monitors, visual obstacles can be even more acute with mobile devices.

This realization led me to the American Federation for the Blind's Web site, and to a Cell Phones, PDAs, GPS's message board on the site.

The posts were a combination of frustration and proposed work-arounds. One poster summed up the issue for so many: "You can send a man to the moon, send a satellite to Mars, build a space center in outer space, but why can't they produce a cell phone or a PDA or even a GPS with audio technology for the visually impaired," asked poster Johncue.

Some readers wrote back with solutions, which included Nokia 6620 with the Mobile Speak, screen reader, and a PDA called Pac-mate that works with an optional Braille keyboard and accessories.

There's something else. It costs $3,000, but just might work. It's a headworn video magnifier named JORDY. Made by a company known as Enhanced Vision, who named the product after Geordi LaForge, a sightless character in Star Trek: The Next Generation.

And if you read through this Associated Press article, you'll see that a visually impaired NASA engineer has an idea to scale down the JORDY so it could work with handsets.

It would be welcome but ironic if a handset usability solution for the JORDY - named after a fictional space exploration scientist - came from a visually impaired real-world space exploration scientist.