October 6, 2003.

by Frances Gleeson,
ElectricNews.net
Mobile software developer Babel Technologies and Spanish company
Owasys
have announced a new mobile phone for people who are blind or visually
impaired.

The owasys22c operates on an embedded text-to-speech (TTS) solution=
called
PocketBabil from the speech software company Babel Technologies, which
says
the tool can read the names of incoming callers and read text messages
out
loud. Menus are also read aloud and can be chosen by using the keypad.

Owasys marketing and sales director Fernando Aguirre said in a
statement
that the phone, which is due to launch in January, will give an "easy and
friendly" way for visually impaired people to access information from a
mobile.

PocketBabil is available on a number of devices that have been
targeted=
to
blind and visually impaired users, and according to Vince Fontaine, CEO
of
Babel Technologies, such software is finding an increasingly wide market
niche as more people with visual impairment use mobile phones and
notebook
computers that can benefit from text-to-speech. Fontaine played down the
fact that the Oways22c handset does not have Braille, saying that mobile
phone users who are blind are already au fait with the layout of a
handset.

The technology on which PocketBabil is based is available in 18=
languages.
Babel claims that it can "produce any utterance in a given speech or
language" with a relatively small hardware requirements in terms of
memory.

PocketBabil is similar to the TALKS solution Nokia uses in its
Communicator 9290 range. In fact, Fontaine said that Babel is negotiating
with Nokia with a view to providing its speech technology to the mobile
giant. With the Nokia Communicator 9290, it is possible to attach a=
portable
Braille display to the phone; the device retailed at a little over USD500
when it was first launched in 2002.

Fontaine said that later this month, Babel is to launch another
text-to-speech mobile phone with IGEL in the US. PocketBabil is also
used=
in
the ALVA MPO (Mobile Phone Organiser), which has a Braille keyboard and a
speech synthesizer, and which was launched in March this year, retailing=
for
more than USD4000.

No retail price has yet been released for the owasys22c, which is due
to
be distributed by Once, a Spanish organisation of the blind.


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