Reddit reviews DYMO Organizer Xpress Handheld Embossing Label Maker (12965)

• Someone fully blind might have an easier time tweaking their sleep cycle to have them alert at night, and being accustomed to functioning without sight could make them a capable watchman/guard. Few sighted city people appreciate just how dark it gets at night without electricity. I'd take an alert person standing guard by ear over a sleepy person half-assedly looking around for flashlight beams or whatnot, any day. I suspect that standing "watch" on a cloudy/rainy night is a place where someone accustomed to functioning with limited or no visual range would substantially outperform anyone accustomed to relying on their vision for information about their surroundings.
  
  
• Depending on your part of the world and how many plants are poisonous/harmful to touch, someone blind could build farming and plant identification skills that put "clueless sighted person visually examining a botanical guidebook" to shame. Scent and texture are important cues about whether garden crops are doing well or what they need, also.
  
  
• In the little house on the prairie books, one of the girls went blind as a result of some disease. She was able to assist the family by doing various sewing and handicrafts tasks.
  
  
• A blind person skilled at electronics and radio stuff could be just as valuable as any other HAM or communications geek. Sure, they'd probably have to work on adapting the gear before SHTF, but that's kind of what prepping is all about anyways. If they decide to climb the electronics skill tree and prep appropriate solar panels or whatever to keep their equipment charged, they could also rely on neat tools like simple ultrasonic rangefinders hooked to a speaker to detect how far away objects are and stuff. When recommending gear for a blind person, bear in mind that tiny or deeply inset screws (such as those on the back of many laptops) are extremely challenging to identify and examine by touch, whereas those that stick out or are flush with the surface that they fasten (such as those on many server and PC cases) are realistic to operate without sight.
  
  
• If someone who can't read can labels is prepping food items, they might need to come up with a more creative way to identify the items and years of things in cans. A really cheap embossing label maker might fit the bill, or maybe they make stuff like that for braille? I don't know.
  
  
• In a post-SHTF scenario, the minute a visitor realizes that the person they're talking to is blind, they may attempt to take advantage of them in some way. If I was a blind prepper, one of my higher priorities would be to get into a self-defense class. I would probably choose something focused on hand to hand combat against opponents who might be armed. My expertise in martial arts is sadly limited, but I suspect that the more physical-contact-oriented disciplines would give a sighted person less of an advantage over a blind one. At least, I would personally far prefer to attempt judo blindfolded than karate.
  
  
• I know it's not the case for all, but AIUI some blind people study in a more memorization-focused way than sighted people -- when it's harder to take and read notes, simply storing the information in your head becomes more worthwhile. Look at any culture without widespread literacy and printing presses (or higher-tech analogues), and the people who resemble walking libraries usually have a pretty well-respected role regardless of their physical or visual abilities.
  
  

It's a raised-type label maker. Think about it like this: Before being able to "print" onto the labels, the machine would instead punch the letter from the back into the strip and cause it to 1) be raised and 2) because of the way the material works, the stretching of the material would make the color change (usually to white)... this about how stretching anything plastic has this effect.

A machine that did this looks like this.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B001D708H4/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_L5IHDb2HH51GB

Wow. Amazon has them. You'll need the plastic embossing tape, too.

I had no idea that Dymo still made these.

Not so vintage, you can still buy new label maker today

http://www.amazon.com/DYMO-12966-Mechanical-Embosser-Tape/dp/B0000AQOD3/ref=sr_1_1?srs=2529320011&ie=UTF8&qid=1458400046&sr=8-1&keywords=embosser

edit: this one's cheaper:

http://www.amazon.com/DYMO-Organizer-Embossing-Hand-Held-12965/dp/B001D708H4/ref=pd_sim_229_5?ie=UTF8&dpID=41-WSU2lC9L&dpSrc=sims&preST=_AC_UL160_SR160%2C160_&refRID=13ASD59649W3BFGNBGKP

>the Dymo label is consistent with that era.

Probably, but not necessarily