Accessible Cell Phones -- NY Times Story

[Janina Sajka]

I would post the article, but that would exceed Kirk's 5K limit ...



The following is from the New York Times at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/12/technology/circuits/12phon.html

A printer friendly version is available at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/12/technology/circuits/12phon.html?pagewanted=print&position=

February 12, 2004
A New Cellphone Nods to the Needs of the Disabled
By LISA GUERNSEY

ONNIE O'DAY, a slight woman with nimble fingers, is standing in the dining
room of her home in Alexandria, Va., demonstrating how she uses her
cellphone. She presses some buttons and the phone emits a beep. "I don't
know what I just did," Dr. O'Day said. "It beeps and I don't know what's
going on."

For most users, a glance at the screen would answer that question. But Dr.
O'Day, a 48-year-old senior research associate at the Cornell Center for
Policy Research in Washington, has a condition called low vision, meaning
she can discern little more than forms and colors.

She can make and receive calls by feeling her way around the keys. But she
has no way of knowing that her battery is almost fully charged and that she
is receiving a fairly strong signal. She cannot read the caller ID. It is
difficult for her to add contacts to the phone book and impossible to scroll
through it to retrieve stored phone numbers. For that, she must use her
five-pound, $3,500 Braille computer.

Those barriers led Dr. O'Day to file a formal complaint with the Federal
Communications Commission last year against her service provider, Verizon
Wireless, and Audiovox, which made the cellphone she was using at the time.
Her case against Verizon is still pending, but in December she settled her
case with Audiovox after the company agreed to include new features in its
next crop of phones.

The first of those models, the Toshiba VM4050, became available last week at
Sprint PCS retailers. (Toshiba owns part of Audiovox's wireless subsidiary.)
One of its tricks is the ability to talk: when this feature is turned on, it
tells users in a recorded voice that, say, the battery is low or the phone
is in roaming mode.

Darren Burton, a technology associate for the American Foundation for the
Blind, has been using the phone for about a week to evaluate its ease of
use. "This is certainly a significant step forward," said Mr. Burton, who
said he most appreciated the voiced reports on battery level, signal status,
roaming, new voice-mail messages and missed calls. But he said it still had
"a way to go'' in making other features equally accessible, like the phone's
menus, e-mail in-box, text messaging and Internet browser.

[Remainder deleted because of posting restrictions]


-- 
	
Janina Sajka
Email: janina at rednote.net		
Phone: +1 (202) 408-8175

Director, Technology Research and Development
American Foundation for the Blind (AFB)
http://www.afb.org

Chair, Accessibility Work Group
Free Standards Group
http://a11y.org