I'm a bit confused by the questions asked by Richards friend. With bits like "Is Mudcat up and running again?" I would have thought he was asking more about site availability/reliability than about accesability for someone with poor eyesight.

Reliability: I think Mudcat has improved overall (I'd ignore things like the fire/electrical - really that was a one off) but probably still has more work to do.

Accessability: Mudcat has always been a very clear site which will work with just about any browser and low screen resolutions. The only problem I had (some time ago) with it when trying a text reader to speak out the text, to see how I would get on if I couldn't see the screen was the likes of quicklinks, letters for searching the dt, etc. It is fine and natural for a sighted person but my own feeling was it would be very confusing and that there was a lot of stuff to wade through before reaching the threads for a blind person - imagine having every letter of the alphabet read out to you and all the contents of the quick links each time you want to read the page.

Other sites, I'd have to mention the quiet one I try to run: folkinfo. I don't think it's quite as clear cut as Mudcat (I don't use a plain white background) but I'd think is still easy to read. Availability has not been as good as I had wanted but between that and a backdoor for the forum at a href=www.jonbanjo.com/folkinfo/forum.asp, I am probably achieving close to 99% uptime.

If news readers are an option, uk.music.folk, rec.music.folk and rec.music.celtic are all worth a look - at least I read them and alt.banjo each day.

Jon