Hello Lloyd, While setting up a wireless router is fairly easy in terms of setting up encryption and the like, in other words, a Wireless password so only people who have the password can access it, the hardware setup can be moderate to advanced, depending on the type of service you have.
If you have or are looking to install a wireless router on a service utilizing DSL service, then it may be difficult without sighted help, as the installation required the installation of filters to the existing phone jacks, and those phone jack filters are rarely easy for a blind person to be able to distinguish between the line in and line out. for the router and the phone line. Having said that, you said your friend is colour blind, and so the difficulty level drops significantly for him, as he can look at the diagrams on the filters to be able to distinguish between the two jacks that have to be plugged in. The only problem I could see him encountering, and this would be with both services, cable and DSL, is being able to tell whether the router is online or not. This part requires some colour identification with the lights on the router, and so if he cannot tell what colour the lights are, he can't advise the rep, if he calls, what colour they are. With the cable service, it's a bit more simplified, as it does not involve any filtering of the lines, and just requires straight lines into the router, and those are fairly hard to miss. In most cases though, as soon as you tell the service provider that you're blind/visually impaired, or even colour blind, in most cases, they are required to send out a tech to install the piece of equipment, as it does require sight to distinguish the colours on the router. You should enquire about that. Once the hardware is set up, the rest is fairly simple, and just involves logging into the router to set up any firewall, although this part is already configured by default, unless your friend operates a server or something else that would require remote access, and setting up a password for the wireless. Advanced users will often access the router to increase the time out protocols and connection types, but these are better left alone for people who have little experience with those types of settings. It's all done through your Internet browser, like Firefox or Internet Explorer, and does require a username and password, but that can be given to you by your ISP tech support. Hope this helps. Scorpio For answers to frequently asked questions about this list visit: http://www.jaws-users.com/help/
