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Cell Phone For the Blind?
brigc writes "Here's one that's got me stumped. A friend of mine who is blind asked me for help tracking down a cell phone for him. He's interested in a flip phone with well-defined separations between the keys, and as much voice control as possible. Battery life is the only other thing he mentioned. Preferably something that would work on AT&T's network in the US. We spent part of the afternoon in a local AT&T store checking out all the flip phones they had and didn't find one he really loved. Anyone have any ideas?"
There was a story some months back about a phone that would read to you by interpreting pictures from the built-in camera, but it doesn't have much information about usability. I'm sure it'd be handy to have some sort of text-to-speech option for common cell phone features like caller ID and text messaging, or even just reading menu names.
Why not just refer to information from some local organisation of blind people? There's this survey of accessible mobile phones in the UK, but surely there must be something similar for the USA.
http://www.screenlessphone.com/
Has voice commands (In that it will read the command name to you as you go over it), as well as well-defined separations between the keys. It, has good battery life, too. It's a candybar phone, however, and is very limited. I picked one up (with prepaid service) for about $12, but their full retail US is still only around $50. CDMA and 3G are both available.
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I have a blind daughter and she uses an Nokia N95 and it works verey good, i also know that there is some OCR software for Nokia N82 coming up soon which can read a photo, that could be an even better choice.
My blind friend uses an HTC Mogul, with a mobile version of JAWS. JAWS is probably the speech software for most blind computer users.
Why yes, I *AM* new here. Why?
http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/BlindFAQ
Hands down the best voice commands I've ever used in a phone is Voice Commander for Windows Mobile 5. (I believe it's now included with WM6 as standard.) Not only does it do voice dialling of your contacts and numbers by simply saying "Dial 555 1234" but it also gives you control over the launching apps, mp3 playback, reading SMS messages, signal status and time and appointments.
For a full list take a look at the Microsoft website.
It also doesn't need any training or any setup you just press and speak and it works surprisingly well.
As for hardware that'll depend on your budget and availability but there are lots of options for Windows Mobile powered phones including candy bars and and flip phones.
I have the RAZR2 (V8). You can operate the phone entirely through voice commands, including dialing people in the phonebook and just dialing phone numbers. You can set "Talking Phone" mode so that it reads each menu item as you go over it. The keys are not physically separated but there are ridges between the rows of keys, and the imprinting is raised so you can tell by feel when you're on a key. The phone has audible caller-ID, but for some stupid reason T-Mobile disables that on their phones. If you look into the RAZR2, be sure that features is enabled or get an unlocked phone.
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Get a phone from this list: http://www.nuance.com/talks/phones.asp Then buy this software: http://www.nuance.com/talks/ It's a screen reader for Nokia S60 phones. It is perfect for blind and visually impaired persons. My dad is blind and he's used it for quite a few years now. The supported phones are top of the line. My dad has a Nokia N95, I think, and he really likes that the Talks screen reader is compatible with most of the phone, including email, web browsing, media player, calendar, address book, and the amazing voice commands, which provide a great shortcut for blind users. I highly recommend it. And Nokia phones are the best, IMO.