I think if it were me I'd try the freelancing route first, if it doesn't work out then seek employment. Of course whatever you do is going to mean retraining but I guess with the skills you akready have you could easily jump into java, .net etc and as I say Access still has users out there.

I think I'd just prefer having a client base I can actually talk to rather than work for a big corp. But then I've never worked for a big corp, and we're now down to 6 people from a peak of 250 in our business. The last decade or so our customers were all big corps and we hated every minute of it, never felt in charge of our destiny.