Myopia is a disablity and like diabetis and obesitas it is a common one, hence making it accepted/normal. The disability related to opia (eye sight) occuring in elder is called presbyopia; not myopia. The first part of this word in Greek literally means 'elder' or 'old man'. Although it is less common than myopia, myopia is not the problem at hand because myopia is socially accepted and normally solved (glasses, lenses, laser).

The problem you describe here is not about farsight or nearsight. It is specifically about not being able to read text in reading distance, such as a newspaper. You can be farsighted [b]and[/i] not able to read a newspaper or magazine or computer screen. So besides that you can use a pair of glasses for solely that or you buy mutli focal. Sometimes, in work environments the environment is adapted to the worker because of their disability. As you can imagine this isn't cheap.

(First, I'm glad you do care about using your eyes optimally and don't point to other products or personae as being the root of the problem.)

Once you take into account differentiation between different eye related disabilities we can think of how they're dealt with world-wide. I don't know about world-wide either. I know that in my country you can go to a store which sells lenses and glasses and can get your eyes tested for free (as in beer). Only for advanced metrics you'd need to see an optometrist. Heck, you can then even order your glasses or lenses on the Internet where it is far cheaper than in the physical store.

Insurance is mandatory in my country, I don't know about rest of Europe though. This is so that for example when someone who lands in hospital, is covered by insurance, so that person who got wounded is delivered to hospital the hospital can be sure the person pays their bill.

Basic insurance is relatively cheap and you insure what you feel is important although the packages got changed in 2009. So depending on your insurance package you get like 100 or 200 EUR insured for your glasses (or lenses) every 24 months. This doesn't include the frame. Before 2009 you could even file in your tax report the frame and amount of glasses not insured as 'extraordinary expense', which in effect meant that if you are poor you can distract this from your tax expense; this lowered the possibility a poor person could not afford a pair of glasses, but I imagine it was also abused.

As you can see this is different from the United States of America where poor people are not even insuranced which is a strange thought in the eyes of a Dutchman. Meanwhile, right under the Netherlands, in Belgium it is mandatory to vote during elections. We do not have that. So be careful with generalisations. Resumee, in my opinion it is incredibly irresponsible for someone to not care about their eyesight, and I cannot fathom people who are able to buy an internet tablet would not use their money to first solve their myopia. I have the same opinion about presbyopia but I know getting this solved is a bit harder because its more expensive, and it is less known and socially accepted. Although it has always been around.

I question it is marketable, and if the reason is solely the bad eyesight of regulars on this forum I find that quite sad because there is an easy solution for these humans which makes their life in general better instead of only their Maemo-based hardware experience.

Even though I question it is marketable, and I believe its more a vocal group which would otherwise be served by a rather 'dumb terminal' in the size of 770/N8x0 (or even bigger, or foldable screen). IOW: I do not believe its the end of 'the tablet'. And heck, there still are tablets like Tablet PC and Wacon. Just different use case.

If that argument means nothing to you I still say what I said various times already: you should team up with specifications of the preferred hardware and convince the Nokia corporation there is a market for it. What that means is that you will together also argue about other design choices. There will be design choices on which you disagree or have to discuss to get consensus. If you weed that out it will be easier for Nokia (or an other corporation) to understand your position.

Heh there are quite interesting projects in scientific community, like being able to see with your ears by using a camera which then communicates via the nerves of the ear... although we don't have portable microscopes marketed for the general public just yet, but it might be a cool project for a portable micro e-book reader