to follow up on what RB Jones said:

> Our company has been researching transmitting data over the existing
> radio FM bands. It occured to us that there may be some applications
> which would assist people who are blind or visually impaired. It should
> be possible for instance, to send information to a mobile person who
> uses a screen reader or similar device.
>
> Since we have not before worked on a project specifically for persons
> who are blind, we were looking for input from more knowedgeable people.
> Do you think there is any use for such technology, configured for
> applications for people who are blind? What type of data would people be
> interested in receiving and in what format? The types of things which
> are currently being done includes pager services and remote billboard
> management.
>
> Please send any replies to [log in to unmask] as I do not normally
> monitor this group.
>

Roger,

I think that the distinguishing thing about FM-band mobile
data services would be that there is relatively small bandwidth
and relatively wide area coverage.  This suggests services for
which the demand is sparsely distributed and not great in overall
quantity.  Applications for the blind are more likely to want
to buy their wireless data from the lowest bidder, not from
a specific data link technology.

Blind people will be interested in mobile (untethered) data
communication, but they are unlikely to care about the band, per
se.  It would seem that for services rendered to the blind there
is an almost total independence between the data communication
physical medium and the blind-specific nature of the use to which
the communicated data are put.

It is more likely that there would be blind-specific functions
developed with, say, infra-red line-of-sight data links to do
things such as trigger talking signs.  Often the information
which blind people need in data that others soak up by vision is
very local in nature.  Line-of-sight frequencies lend themselves
to content which is different in different locales.

You might want to review what has been done at the MIT Media Lab
on wearable computing for research suggestive of services for the
blind that could be delivered over nomadic computing data
channels.

IMHO

--
Al Gilman