The shell does not control the graphics card at all.

Since you did not say which type of computer (Amiga? Mac?
hand-held?) you are using, there's some room for variation
in the "normal" display.  But on a fairly typical type of
computer, NetBSD's default text console setup is about 25
rows by 80 columns, with white text on black background.

(I would prefer black text on grey background for better
legibility, personally.  I do not know if that can be
done without going to X, however.)


There is some support for changing the text console's font.
I do not know if there are any large-glyph fonts available.
(There are smaller fonts for people who want to get more text
onto their display, however, so larger fonts should be an
option.)

Another option would be to get a larger monitor.

I do not know if there is any voice synth. method to get the
computer to read your shell output to you.

Another option would be to print the text on a printer.  You
might be able to fairly easily run text through a filter to
produce larger letters.  (This, of course, runs up an expense
on paper, and won't work so well if you don't have a printer.)


An option that you might look into is the banner(1) program
that comes with NetBSD:

$ banner banner


 #####     ##    #    #  #    #  ######  #####
 #    #   #  #   ##   #  ##   #  #       #    #
 #####   #    #  # #  #  # #  #  #####   #    #
 #    #  ######  #  # #  #  # #  #       #####
 #    #  #    #  #   ##  #   ##  #       #   #
 #####   #    #  #    #  #    #  ######  #    #



There is a similar program called "figlet" in pkgsrc.  figlet
includes a bunch of additional fonts, and there are many more fonts
available separately.  But the core idea is similar to banner(1):
It uses character cells, filled with various ASCII letters, to
generate physically much larger text.

A downside of banner and figlet is that they were not designed for
interactive use.  Still...they may be of some help to you.


Ultimately, you may be best served simply be setting up X, however.

-- 
  "I probably don't know what I'm talking about."  http://www.olib.org/~rkr/