Category: accessible Devices
HI all. Just wondering. AFew weeks ago I went to my local shopping centre and was looking at a moble phone shop and saw a blackbery that looked easyish to use, I was also impressed with the slimline look. But I didn't investigate further as i wasn't sure: Is there any screenreaders/moble speech software that could be usefull on a blackbery moble phone? I have a nokia with talx on it, butI feela change would be nice. If anyone knows, could they please reply. Cheers.
yeah there is but it's still limiting in what you can access with it so atleast not yet worth the $400+ they are charging for it.
It is called Orator, made by Humanware, and only runs on certain models from Blackberry, only gives limited access, and is $400, like mr Monkey said.
AT&T might have some sort of deal for it that I am not aware of, right now I would not go for a Blackberry, because most of its extra functions are business related, good email and browsing, but it is exactly those features that are not supported by Orator yet.
Humanware renamed it to oratio, now.
From what I have heard it's very limited in what it can access, and the voice on it isn't as good as eloquence or vocaliser on talks.
Moreover on good authority, there is no plans for humanware to support any additional bb devices until mid 2011. so for now it's the 8530 from at&t or nothing at all.
HI cheers for yor answers, glad I came up here to get afew ideas as what not to get. I think I've just saved alot of money. what's that price in gbp?
KT
Not sure if you can even get it in the UK, I doubt it actually, but price would be 250 to 400 pounds (keep in mind European prices have taxes and are often higher from the manufacturer than the U.S. retail prices).
If you look at www.blindbargains.com there is an interview about the Oratio today, they claim to have much better support in the next generation devices, probably sooner than middle of 2011.
The problem is, and I give them that, this is the first time a screen reading solution is written for a Java portable platform, and it requires a lot of design from scratch. Talks and MobileSpeak were pretty crappy in the beginning but the problem is that you can get them, an IPhone or Android for options.
I am hopeful about Android, though TalkBack/KickBack is not far enough along yet.
WB, according to sources I've spoken with, I'll be very surprised if a new bb device is supported prior to late first quarter in 2011. While I agree talks and MSS were slow in development, the developers were a bit more transparent in the process. One question I find interesting that no one seems to want to ask is, if google/android and apple have begun emplementing screen reading technology in their products why hasn't rim stepped up and begun designing there OS with an accessibility point of view, since certainly because they do colaberate with HW, during development. Personally, I don't have any faith in HW, so I seriously doubt this software ever materializes in to something substantual, which is disappointing, as many clients I work with could deffinitly use the BB devices like their sighted colleagues.
I do not want to bash any AT companies specifically, but I must agree with your assessment of HW. Their customer service has been horrific in my experience and they keep raising their prices and convincing customers to be expensive and inferior solutions such as the Apex (seriously, $6300 for a unit that does not have but a small part of the processor power or possibilities of a net book that costs $199).
I would hope that the job of an A.T. companies should be to adapt mainstream technologies so that they do not need to exist any more, not to write proprietary software.
WB, my point exactly, I'm not sure why RIM wouldn't see this as an opportunity to write the software for their OS themselves, and thus increase sales of their products all be it by a smaller market, but obviously corporate and government agencies would be onboard almost instantly. Heck, their already forcing us to recommend the 8520 in spite of all it's short comings. Of course as a whole we're spoiled because codefactory has over the past 3 or 4 years offered us a great deal of options when it comes to mobile computing, couple this with the options from apple and android, and it's hard to be patient and hope for a screenreader for the BB from a company that just doesn't have a great track record for delivering timely products and offering fair prices. Top that off with no demo of the product, and there you have it, a really tough experience. I personally was onboard to buy this product almost two years ago when I first heard about it, and when it finally came out it wasn't even for the device that HW had stated it was going to first be available on. In any event I guess we'll all have to sit back and continue waiting to see what if anything ever materializes.
that's a good point. why isn't accessibility built in to blackberries.
you'd think that they would have done that by now.
With the iPhone, and the droid, all the accessibility like voice over and talk back is built in to the OS
The senate passed a bill last week that will require all phones to have built-in accessibility, even for web browsing. And since Apple has already begun that, we're off to a good start. Now we've just got to wait for it to be passed into law.
Hi again all. This is an interesting debate. My gf and I were discussing the fact that all phone companies should, by law incorperate text to speech software in as standard. Sounds like the bb story is tipical, they charge the earth for something they know you need, that's taking the mic.