I did not find this phone on the sprint site. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Joe Clever" <lists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> To: "'Speakup is a screen review system for Linux.'" <speakup at braille.uwo.ca> Sent: Sunday, December 28, 2003 2:08 PM Subject: FW: More Info on New Accessible Cell Phone Since there has been a lot of discussion about this lately... -----Original Message----- From: VICUG-L: Visually Impaired Computer Users' Group List [mailto:VICUG-L at MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU] On Behalf Of Kelly Pierce Sent: Sunday, December 28, 2003 1:14 PM To: VICUG-L at MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU Subject: More Info on New Accessible Cell Phone Hello all, In the last hour, I reached Bonnie O'Day who shared some information about the new accessible cell phone. As many know, Bonnie filed a discrimination complaint about cell phone accessibility against cell phone producer Audiovox and service provider Verizon Wireless. last week, Audiovox settled the complaint by offering a cell phone that provides voice guidance to enable blind users to place and receive voice calls. The complaint is still pending against Verizon who has not decided to offer the new phone. Verizon is America's largest wireless communications company with 38 million subscribers. It had $1.8 billion in profits in the third quarter of 2003. The telephone is currently offered by Sprint as the VM4050 by Toshiba. It has the following audio features: *Voice announce of On/off *Voice announce of Roaming out of local area *Voice identifying battery status by percentage *Voice confirmation of outgoing telephone number to be dialed *Talking caller ID of incoming calls *Voice announcement that voice mails are waiting when phone is turned on. Bonnie thanked the American Foundation for the Blind who hired as a consultant a highly knowledgeable telecommunications expert that provided invaluable technical assistance in working with the companies to develop this solution. It is unclear if this telephone is available at storefront Sprint locations or just through catalog orders. In either event, the audio functionality is built right into the phone. There is no special software to install and no blind version either! The mainstream product itself is accessible for basic functionality. Kelly VICUG-L is the Visually Impaired Computer User Group List. To join or leave the list, send a message to listserv at maelstrom.stjohns.edu. In the body of the message, simply type "subscribe vicug-l" or "unsubscribe vicug-l" without the quotations. VICUG-L is archived on the World Wide Web at http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/vicug-l.html _______________________________________________ Speakup mailing list Speakup at braille.uwo.ca http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
