Hello all,

In the last hour, I reached Bonnie O'Day who shared some information
about the new accessible cell phone.  As many know, Bonnie filed a
discrimination complaint about cell phone accessibility against cell
phone producer Audiovox and service provider Verizon Wireless.  last
week, Audiovox settled the complaint by offering a cell phone that
provides voice guidance to enable blind users to place and receive voice
calls.  The complaint is still pending  against Verizon who has not
decided to offer the new phone.  Verizon is America's largest wireless
communications company with 38 million subscribers.  It had $1.8 billion
in profits in the third quarter of 2003.

The telephone is currently offered by Sprint as the VM4050 by Toshiba.
It has the following audio features:

*Voice announce of On/off
*Voice announce of Roaming out of local area
*Voice identifying battery status by percentage
*Voice confirmation of outgoing telephone number to be dialed
*Talking caller ID of incoming calls
*Voice announcement that voice mails are waiting when phone is turned on.

Bonnie thanked the American Foundation for the Blind who hired as a
consultant a highly knowledgeable telecommunications expert that provided
invaluable technical assistance in working with the  companies to develop
this solution.  It is unclear if this telephone is available at
storefront Sprint locations or just through catalog orders.  In either
event, the audio functionality is built right into the phone.  There is
no special software to install and no blind version either!  The
mainstream product itself is accessible for basic functionality.

Kelly


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