The problem bryant is you have outlined a simplistic arguement to a complex situation and are generalizing from a few facts. For example there is a big difference between wanting something for free and declaring that a price is too high.
I also am afraid I categorically disagree with your statement "it is not a right it is a privilidge" To take the knf reader as an example would you say to a sighted person "you do not have the right to use your own physical organs to read text?"
The inherent goal of such software is not to give blind people something they do not have, but something which sighted people get for granted. In an ideal world, yes, these things should be freely provided by the government to provide a true equality between all citizens of a country.
We are manifestly not living in such an ideal world, therefore we are dealing with a matter of compromise. Given that access companies need money to develop products and keep going, they do need to charge for that development. The issue people have with things like knf reader is the price being charged for what is done, that the price is excessive considdering the fact that what is being provided is equal access. Similar arguements have been made about screen readers, living aides and other devices, not that the various manufacturers shouldn't! charge for something, but simply that the amount being charged is unrealistic, and that part of the reasoning behind this unrealistic charging scheme is that they are essentially selling to a captive audience, and furthermore, that they expect the costs to be taken by governmental grants or agencies.
I will take probably the worst example I've ever seen of over chargingto illustrate the arguement, it is an example I've made before, but it is such a good one to illustrate the problem that it is worth reitterating.
I once, at the Uk tech show sight village saw a device which essentially had a small button control that could be houng on the belt, and a little sensor with a clip. You clipped the sensor to say your keys, or your cane, or the arm of your seat on the train if you left, and if you pressed the button up to a distance of about 30 feet away the sensor would bleep letting you find whatever you'd stuck it on by audio.
Very handy and a nice gadget, ---- however there was a small matter of it costing £350, ---- that's about 600 usd!
heck, I am no expert in electronics by any means yet have a good idea how that device works, however the manufacturer was charging an insane price for something which essentially simply gave blind people part of the function of distantly locating objects sighted people get.
Of course, nnot all access companies do this. I was quite pleased for example when i bought my penfriend labeller to find it cost just £40, that is about 60 dolars, which given how much I use the thing seemed reasonable to me.
I am uncertain whether there is any sort of measure you could make to say whether a given product was or was not too expensive, particularly when considdering individual finances, and the fact that we do not necessarily always know what the cost of development is, but the bottom line is unfortunately that there have been a class of access products which definitely do! go beyond the bounds of reasonable pricing.
Remember, it is implicit to the nature of a company that they generate prophit. If they did not generate prophit they would not be a company. Generation of prophit isn't itself a bad thing, the issue seems to be exactly how much prophet is being made from customers who often don't have too much options where going elsewhere is concerned. If these companies were indeed as you suggest working out of the goodness of their hearts they would not exist as companies but as charitable agencies, which is not so far fetched as you might think (that is how the guide dogs association in the Uk exists).
Of course there is a big difference between a company who generate the prophet they need to keep going and live reasonably, and the company who are in it to gouge their customers as much as possible and be rich, and unfortunately there isn't really an easy way of determining the motives of any access company.
so Bryant, while I understand your frustration, I believe you are rather over simplifying a very complex matter and one which it is likely doesn't have any real concrete solution sinse there are a lot of facts we don't know aobut the costs of development of any given access product, in addition, it will depend heavily upon personal finances, sinse to me £40 for the penfriend was quite reasonable,but to someone in another country with a different currency it might well not be.
@Bryan P, it is the helplessness atittude that gets up my nose most, people who won't try anything for themselves or go out of their little blind comfort zone. that is one reason I have very little to do with blind people in the Uk, indeed this forum is about the most interacting with other blind people I do not counting my family.
With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)