An approach to introduce the visually impaired to personal computers is presented in this thesis. The PC used for this work was an IBM PC Portable. Use of the resident software developed in conjunction with a Votrax Voice Unit can greatly simplify PC applications for the visually impaired. Further, a method to communicate with a mainframe is also presented. Almost all of the commonly used DOS application software are supported by the software presented in this thesis. Two modes of operation are possible. The advantages and differences between these two modes are considered. A detailed discussion on the software implementation is also presented. A method to develop resident programs that need to trap PC BIOS vectors is presented. It should be noted that the shell concept presents a shell of user invoked resident applications and not a group of subprograms which can be used by other applications. / M.S.