I apologize in advance if the following has those awful =20's in it.  I'm 
certainly not sending it with them.
Rachel

Cingular offers handset for blind

By Peter J. Howe, Globe Staff  |  September 17, 2004

In a first for the US cellphone industry, Cingular Wireless LLC yesterday 
began offering a handset specially designed for blind and vision-impaired 
people,
with software that can convert virtually everything on the phone screen -- 
including text messages -- to synthesized speech.

ADVERTISEMENT

Through a partnership with
ScanSoft Inc.,
a Peabody speech technology company, Cingular is the first carrier to 
directly promote a text-to-speech-enabled phone. The
Nokia
6620 unit with the ''TALKS" software costs $300 with a two-year contract, 
based on a current promotion that gives subscribers a $199 wireless service 
credit
when they buy the speech software, which costs $199.

''The most important thing that the Cingular phone does is it actually 
makes every single thing on the phone menu accessible to someone who is 
blind or
has low vision," said Kelly M. Parisi, communications vice president of the 
American Foundation for the Blind. As users push buttons to scroll through
the handset menu, they will hear every category -- such as ''call log" and 
''profiles" -- spoken aloud, and can also hear the phone numbers of incoming
and missed calls.

Parisi said the phone could also help people with other conditions, as well 
as people without disabilities who would like hands-free convenience.

The TALKS system is made by a German software company, Brand & Grober 
Communications GbR, which ScanSoft bought this week. It has been available 
for several
months as a $395 stand-alone product that works on certain high-end Nokia 
phones that operate on AT&T Wireless, T-Mobile, and some other carriers.

However, the Cingular plan cuts the total cost by roughly half. Also,a 
small memory card inserted in the phone eliminates the need for what 
Foundation for
the Blind researcher Darren Burton called a ''fairly difficult" process of 
loading the speech software on the phone from a computer.

While computer makers have introduced a range of text-to-speech systems to 
aid blind users since the 1990s, organizations representing the 10 million 
Americans
who are blind or have limited vision have for years criticized wireless 
carriers for falling short. They point to provisions of the 1996 federal 
telecommunications
act requiring cellphones and services to be accessible to people with 
limited or no vision.

Last month,
Verizon
Wireless, the nation's largest carrier with over 40 million subscribers, 
settled a lawsuit over the issue . Verizon said it will introduce a 
''moderately
priced" handset with features to help blind users later this year. Verizon 
now sells a phone that enables dialing calls by saying a name and offers spoken
caller ID.

Peter J. Howe can be reached at [log in to unmask]
© Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company.


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