One thing wrong with the below article.  Talking phones generally all are 
web phones that have internet service.  This means, you pay a monthly 
service fee for your phone to be connected to the internet.  Plus, the 
speech packages cost money.  What everyone is hoping, of course, is that 
Apple's phones will have the speech and screen reading software built into 
their phones just like they've done with their computers.  Additionally, 
using a web phone to do all your email would be a royal pain in the butt 
because the tiny keyboards make it impossible to do anything more than hunt 
and peck and that is mighty slow.  However, what I am most thankful for, is 
that I can answer anyone by recording a voice attachment.  Then when you get 
it on your end, you simply open the attachment and listen to me talk.  You 
can reply the same way and this can be done from your computer or by your 
web phone.  I'd like to see a mailing list set up for such voice attachments 
only.  If everyone kept their replies to one or two or three minute recorded 
attachments on the mailing list, and the list wasn't allowed to get too 
large, it would be more than a little fun to do.

Phil.



>> Blind users see digital divide in new generation phones.
>>
>> By Jessica Portner on June 22.
>>
>> Smartphones can be pretty clueless when it comes to blind or visually
>> impaired
>> users.
>>
>> For millions of consumers with normal vision, smartphones offer almost
>> effortless conference calling, e-mailing and Internet browsing. They make
>> it
>> easy to find a gas station, a rental car or a recipe. Vast music
>> libraries
>> and
>> video games are expected features for a device with a $200 to $600 price
>> tag.
>>
>> But for many in the blind and visually impaired community, the absence of
>> physical buttons on most smartphones makes interactions with some devices
>> virtually impossible.
>>
>> Nowhere is the digital divide in the smartphone market more pronounced
>> than
>> between Apple and Google products.
>>
>> Blind and visually impaired smartphone users offer near universal praise
>> for
>> the iPhone, whose 3GS has a built-in VoiceOver screen reader that enables
>> all
>> functions with a few taps, swipes or other gestures on the touch screen.
>> On
>> Google's Android phone, blind users can't e-mail or navigate the
>> Internet.
>>
>> Many consumers with visual impairments say they are being held back from
>> equal
>> participation in the digital revolution, denied tools their colleagues
>> and
>> competitors enjoy. Smartphones, they argue, are public accommodations, no
>> different from building ramps or Braille on elevators.
>>
>> "Our electronic, digital universe is changing so rapidly that these
>> phones
>> are
>> as essential to our daily life as a curb cut would be," said Brian
>> Bashin,
>> the
>> CEO of the Lighthouse for the Blind in San Francisco, an advocacy
>> organization
>> for the blind and visually impaired. "We shouldn't have to play catch up
>> with
>> expensive modifications when it all should have been there right out of
>> the
>> box."
>>
>> The Blackberry's Oratio screen reader, for example, costs blind users an
>> extra
>> $450 on top of the price of the Research in Motion phone.
>>
>> This month, a House subcommittee held a hearing on the Twenty-first
>> Century
>> Communications and Video Accessibility Act to direct the Federal
>> Communications
>> Commission to make Internet-enabled communications devices accessible to
>> the
>> more than 25 million adults in the United States with vision trouble.
>>
>> The FCC currently requires telecommunications manufacturers and service
>> providers to make their products accessible to people with disabilities.
>> One
>> FCC
>> official said Google would likely not be liable under the current law
>> because it
>> is not the phone's manufacturer.
>>
>> Jenifer Simpson, a former FCC official who is now the senior director of
>> government affairs at the American Association of People with
>> Disabilities,
>> is
>> frustrated that more companies are creating communications products that
>> the
>> FCC doesn't currently regulate.
>>
>> The question she wants companies to ask is, "Can Grandma give you a phone
>> call
>> on the smartphone you want to buy her for Christmas?"
>>
>> Joshua Miele, an associate scientist at the San Francisco-based
>> Smith-Kettlewell
>> Eye Research Institute who designs educational tools for blind people
>> like
>> himself, says the iPhone is a new paradigm for the more than 1.3 million
>> legally
>> blind people in the United States.
>>
>> "The most amazing thing about the iPhone is you go into the settings and
>> you
>> turn on the screen reader and you can use every part of your phone, every
>> text-based application and you don't have to pay anything extra,'' he
>> said.
>>
>> VoiceOver, the iPhone's built-in screen reader, is controlled though
>> gestures
>> instead of arrow keys or keyboard commands. It can be customized so that
>> a
>> visually impaired person can easily magnify a web page or flip to a
>> white-on-black background.
>>
>> The iPhone 4, unveiled this month, expands the roster of accessibility
>> tools,
>> including the ability to wirelessly connect to a device that displays
>> Braille.
>>
>> Youtube clip at URL http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQKtSR5Li1A
>>
>> In contrast, Google's TalkBack screen reader on its Android mobile
>> operating
>> system doesn't do enough talking, many advocates for the blind say.
>> Android
>> works impressively for calling, listening to music, using global
>> positioning
>> system data and applications like Facebook, but it won't help blind users
>> dispatch an e-mail to their boss or scan a website while waiting at the
>> airport.
>>
>> When Android was released more than a year ago, the disability community
>> was
>> primed for more innovations. When a totally accessible smartphone failed
>> to
>> materialize this year, advocates for the blind castigated Google as a
>> peddler of
>> expectations. The Android 2.2, released a few weeks ago, didn't
>> substantially
>> enhance the phone's accessibility to blind and deaf users.
>>
>> Disability groups have been encouraged by some recent victories. The
>> National
>> Federation of the Blind last year reached a settlement with Motorola
>> after
>> pressuring the leading manufacturer of cell phones to comply with Section
>> 255 of
>> the federal Telecommunications Act. The act requires telecommunications
>> equipment manufacturers and service providers to make their products and
>> services accessible to people with disabilities. The agreement commits
>> the
>> company to make the phone-related functions on its BREW line of phones
>> useable
>> for non-visual customers.
>>
>> Advocates for the blind say Google has done extraordinary work in other
>> areas,
>> pointing to the Google Books Library Project.
>>
>> Steve Jacobs, president of the IDEAL Group, Inc., which develops
>> applications
>> for the blind, said his customers are hopeful that Google's Project
>> Eyes-Free ,
>> which invites software developers to create accessible applications for
>> the
>> Android, will serve up exciting inventions soon.
>>
>> "I believe Google will rise to that occasion," Jacobs said.
>>
>> T.V. Raman, a computer scientist and engineer at Google, agrees.
>>
>> Raman, who lost his eyesight at age 14 from glaucoma, is revered by many
>> people
>> with disabilities for his pioneering work on Google's search service that
>> helped
>> people with visual impairments navigate the web. But the gifted
>> innovator,
>> who
>> solves Rubik's Cubes in Braille for fun, has also been faulted by some
>> for
>> developing products only he could figure out how to use.
>>
>> Raman defended Android in a recent interview as "still a young platform"
>> and
>> said that the accessibility problems in the browser and e-mail will be
>> fixed.
>>
>> "There are rough edges,'' he said. "The best way to silence that
>> criticism
>> is to
>> go and build it. I wanted this yesterday as well."
>>
>> Source URL:
>> http://www.baycitizen.org/technology/story/smartphones-fail-visually-impaired/
>>