From my perspective, as someone who works with students that have learning disabilities, word processing has been a huge equalizer for those students with fine motor difficulties, dysgraphia or other disorders of written expression. The ability that students have to manipulate their words and be in a constant state of editing rather than churning out draft after draft, has made the writing process much easier for them. Being able to bold/italicize text, add bullet points, create charts in a matter of seconds has also made note taking a much less stressful process for these students as well. I know that there are critics who say that the reliance on computers is a bad thing in respect to the spelling and grammar abilities, but really, I think that word processing has made the learning process itself less onerous for these students and therefore “trumps” the issue of spelling and grammar. Bolter points to the issue of revising as being a huge affordance of a word processor and I agree – it is seemingly simple, but when we really think about the progression of the writing process, word processors have taken us a long way!