Nokia E52 and Nokia N86 speaking smartphones from Vodacom

Speaking smartphones from Vodacom

Vodacom launches new Nokia E52 and Nokia N86 speaking smartphones for the visually impaired

Would be nice to see (no pun intended) a BlackBerry with software for the visually impaired: http://www.humanware.com/en-usa/products/blindness/oratio_for_blackberry_smartphones/_details/id_131/oratio_for_blackberry_smartphones.html

Have a buddy who is blind and uses a Nokia - unfortunately he can't BBM or PIN his wife who uses a BlackBerry.

psssht

Eh... if you're visually impaired how're you going to select the text to speech option on your phone?

These phones (E52 & N86) weren't designed for visually impaired people! The E52 (which has been available on MTN of quite a while now) is a successor to the E51 (which also had text to speech capabilities) and is similar to the very popular E71/E72 just without a full keyboard layout which is widely popular.

Android handsets and numerous other phones also feature text to speech funtionality, android even has speech to text...

Its a pathetic attempt by marketing to label them suitable for visually impaired as if its some new feature which none of the other handsets offer... tsk tsk...

fluent said:

Eh... if you're visually impaired how're you going to select the text to speech option on your phone?

These phones (E52 & N86) weren't designed for visually impaired people! The E52 (which has been available on MTN of quite a while now) is a successor to the E51 (which also had text to speech capabilities) and is similar to the very popular E71/E72 just without a full keyboard layout which is widely popular.

Android handsets and numerous other phones also feature text to speech funtionality, android even has speech to text...

Its a pathetic attempt by marketing to label them suitable for visually impaired as if its some new feature which none of the other handsets offer... tsk tsk...

Click to expand...

Another friend of mine has a Nokia E70 with the software loaded - she manages to "select the text to speech option" quite easily. Her phone is set to read anything onscreen at blistering speeds. As far as I know it is special software binded to a short-cut key - not the built in stuff.

I listened to a podcast the other day, and a caller phoned in and spoke highly of the visually impaired accessibility on the iPhones, and how much it has helped her. I am almost an anti-fanboy, but let's not leave the iPhone off the list if it's good at that...Points where points are due. I have an Android, and it has some awesome capabilities, even down to speech to text, but I still don't see how severely visually impaired people will be able to use it, but maybe it's all down to configuration.

francoislr said:

I have an Android, and it has some awesome capabilities, even down to speech to text, but I still don't see how severely visually impaired people will be able to use it, but maybe it's all down to configuration.

Click to expand...

Just checked the accessibility features on the phone, and retract this statement...it's bloody brilliant!

By far the most accessible phone out there for blind people is the iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4. Apple has provided built in accessibility. All you need is to activate voice over and you have a phone that outperforms everything else out there. No need for extra software or anything like that. I don't like Apple, but they are leading the way in accessibility. Check out the videos on the iphone accessibility page and be amazed. Even if you are totally blind, you can brows the web, send emails, read your twitter feeds, and do most other things other people can do with iPhones... and all this with a touch screen.

Blackberry recently got a text-to-speech ap called Oratio. According to all early reviews it is pretty useless for anything beyond the basics.

Android has some very promising text-to-speech functionality built in but it is very buggy and not yet good enough for every day use.

Nokia phones with talx or mobilespeak loaded on them also provides basic text-to-speech functionality. Vodacom offers these two selected phones with talx pre-loaded. There is really no reason why they can't offer many other Nokia phones as well. Say something like the E75. All it takes is installing the ap, which is really easy.

Vodacom are a bit behind the times with this. The iPhone is where things are at in terms of accessibility and i've never even seen them mention it.

As someone with very poor site i've been watching phone accessibility for a while. See my blog on it here if you are interested accesswire.wordpress.com