Category: the Rant Board
Anyone else noticed the state of affairs with cell phones? Users, especially blind users, may not know this but 80% of the phone market are what are called Messaging phones. What a Messaging phone is, is a simple phone which contains your phone book, text messaging, even IM and Email if you pay your carrier for the charges, and in many cases a camera. You can't download apps onto one of these, because it is specifically a phone first. However, it has a camera, a simple calendar (not as sophisticated as Outlook or Windows Mobile of course) and many other small features instantly available on the go.
With the new Kin Phones which are the high end of Messaging phones, you can even use a custom app to go on Facebook and Twitter.
but what most of these users notice is they can very easily call and text. Text is now no longer supplementary, no surprise if you're under twenty I guess, but for some of us we had to get embarrassed for awhile before we figured this out.
Anyway, how many of these messaging phones can you, the blind user, use? How many of them have accessibility all through, meaning someone finished the job? How many of these can you run or purchase without buying an expensive data plan? If you're not paying for your own plan yet, as my daughter doesn't, sorry you don't count. The answer is less than 1% of these phones, and the ones that do only do the job in a way no intern would show me without looking justifiably embarrassed. The work is incomplete, there are areas that are completely inaccessible to both us as blind people and sighted drivers attempting to use the hands-free voiceguide.
This was brought to my attention again as my wife and I went to the local cell phone store to move our daughter's plan to a family plan, and at least get my wife a free phone. Since that means cutting the land line, it should meahn all of us get a cell phone, and were the situation different, I could have.
I find this situation sad for so so many reasons. There's quite a few on here on low income: If you were sighted, you could go in to your phone store as did my wife, and get the free phone which gives you access to phone, text, even email and IM if you want it, but you don't have to pay for the data plan. It's just a phone, and either you buy the data plan or not.
However, if you're blind, you must pay for the data plan or the expensive phone by itself, in other words cough up close to $800. This is not a slight on the screen reader manufacturers: They are selling a premium product for premium devices, all of which if you buy through your carrier require data plans. This is not a rant on them, as they are the Cadillac. What about the Chevy pickups of the phone space, aka messaging phones?
Now I have a reasonably good income, but support 3, so even for us $800 is a lot of money, as most funds go to the household and teenager: all you parents know this, and all you teens now know why maybe mom and dad said no for the iPad.
Besides, I'm looking for ... a phone. I learned the hard way with Verizon the importance of being able to read texts, and not look like a tard having to ask someone to read a personal text message that may have been sent from a school bus where a child needs something, or the like.
But if you're on low income, I imagine these expensive deals (including, say it loud and proud, the iPhone!), are beyond you because you have to buy the data plan or buy an unlocked phone plus, excepting the iPhone of course, a screen reader.
Remember that 80% of the phone market is messaging phones. That's right, 80%. That means most cell phone users, despite what you see in the media, just want a phone that does phone, text, email and maybe pictures.
But if 80% of the phone market is using messaging phones, and I am having trouble with this as one with an income, how very many blind people are getting cut out of the deal because they have low income and can't pay for the fancy smartphones? And what does that do to folks like you all in that category who are out beating down doors / pounding the pavement? It may have been awhile, but I haven't forgotten my early twenties, and I know this is really tough, especially when you're first out of school and have no real career experience yet.
Many companies now assume you have a cell phone and can be called on call for your interviews, if you're low income and looking for work. I know one software developer in his late thirties when he lost his job, opted to get a cheap phone no data plan so he would not miss said calls.
And for us, we've all been there: You're on the train, spend a lot of time between interviews simply getting there. Only when I was doing this in my early twenties, no cell phone expectations existed. They just left voicemails which was new then. Now, if they can't reach you by cell, you're outa luck because there's more in line who have cell phones.
However, when I got my phone from Verizon wich was an LG, I could not read texts. Leave aside the fact some alerts would get the phone stuck and a million presses of End wouldn't cure that, I erroneously thought I wouldn't need text. I thought that was just teenagers and the like doing texts, but lo and behold, I had customers left and right texting orders. And for one simple reason: They could do it while at a meeting or coming in to work.
The moral being that half-done accessibility (LG) isn't really acceptable because even the user, and I would say especially the user, doesn't know what they'll need.
Any of us engineers who have worked on projects have seen users and marketing types claim they won't need something, and consider us overkill for insisting upon putting it in, because frankly we know better: you'll need it, and most likely when you have few other options.
So how would LG not know this? And how would certain "blindness organizations" responsible for lawsuits, who allegedly have science and engineering research consordiums, an institute of some sort, not know this very elemental first-term engineering concept aka finish the job? At least all the menus / options should work?
Studies have shown the sighted population will use speech from within a phone far more readily than they would otherwise, because they're already used to voicemail systems and the like. Something like the Owasys would have been a boon for our aging population not yet connected to the iPhone. And certainly would have been good for mid-career blind folks, people who may already have a PDA device of some sort or other technological investments and just need a basic mobile phone that will do texts as well, for the reasons I described earlier.
Very very unfortunate state of affairs: Not necessarily for someone like me who will ultimately scrounge something together / go without a phone for awhile, but the vast numbers of unemployed blind who no doubt can't afford these high-end devices.
With 80% of the phone market totally inaccessible, it's a joke we even say we're doing the job of accessibility. And for those that have phones you can use fully and independently, you need either buy the unlocked, which is expensive, or buy the data plan which is ultimately more expensive. Apple would have a right to crow about universal access if they did a messaging phone, rather than only the expensive model that requires a data plan.
Really good speech in a phone does not just serve us blind people: it serves motorists (when it works all the way, rather than LG where the driver would have to look down to read a text and subsequently hit a pole).
We're only driving for accessibility of 20% of the phone market. That's 20%
Sorry, when I went to school, 20% was enough of an F minus that even the most mild-mannered parent might beat your ass.
I don't know which is worse: the fact it's not being done, or the propaganda stating that it is.
For anyone saying "Why not return to Verizon? They have better phones now?"
One very simple reason: There's three of us, and we're looking at the whole picture. All you blind parents will understand me on this whether others do or not: Accessibility often takes second or third or last place where expenses are concerned, because, sappy as it may sound, the kids come first.
But I imagine some of you younger college people who may find yourselves wanting to travel abroad may also want to opt for a GSM network like T-Mobile, not for the same reason we have, but the simple reason your phone will work overseas. Oh, and if it's a Nokia series 40 like my wife's free phone, it will. Naturally if you can get the fancy phones those will. But CDMA is U.S. only with no pay-as-you-go options, though for some their plans are sufficient.
My argument still stands and how very American an argument to lock folks into one carrier, and that not in a good way.
But I had nearly forgotten this situation in the past few years, as I've been doing Digital Voice. But now naturally it's cheaper to ditch all landlines and go cellular with the daughter growing up and the wife's book taking off, aka they'll be at conferences and the like. But I'm convinced that though for me this is a great inconvenience, it's nowhere near the issue it must be for some of you.
This and issues like it affecting low-income blind folks is the number one reason I haven't yet found a supposed blindness organization I can respect. You know, the deaf organizations did their political thing to get subsidies for TTY devices, so the manufacturers still got paid for R&D, but the users, many of them low-income, didn't have to pay for the several thousand dollar devices. And you know, all you hear from the blindness organizations is about skills, social learning or what it's called, and the like. And taking my pipe wrench analogy from another board, they're not tooling up, they're just standing in the bathroom letting the sink run all over the floor instead of turning off the valve and getting down to it with the wrench. In other words, they're just playin' around. Amazing how far they might get if they started tooling solutions. Perhaps one will before some of you all leave home and have to start out in a very technological (and very expensive) universe.
My understanding is if your blind you can get any accessible phone with out a data plan through ATT. I haven't tried this since I use the data plan but at least in theory you can get an iphone and not pay $30 for data. I'm not sure if the phone will cost more then $200 since you arn't getting the data plan but it won't cost less.
You are right, and i ought to have mentioned that. Unfortunately we all are on T-Mobile as it has the best pricing for the three of us / what we all need.
But you are right about AT&T, and my hat's off to them as a carrier for providing this option. To anyone wanting to do this, you get a form specifically from their accessibility department and then have your doctor fill that out. That will waive you the data plan. However, you have to go through one or two billing cycles to make it work, but if it's just you and you're doing AT&T, that is well worth considering, that and their rollover minutes.
So I wonder, would an agency pay for one of the low income folks to get such a phone? I can squeak out a few hundred as necessary at least after summer kids things are payed for, but I imagine that's beyond what someone on SSI could be reasonably expected to do. The nice thing about the Owasys with T-Mobile was that at $30 / month nearly anyone could afford it till you pay it off, probably not an option I would have done, but for the lower income folks that would at least be an option.
It's amazing how you run into this stuff, and when you look at it from the vantage of what others must be struggling to try and do. As I said, I would never have really given this any thought, except for where we're at right now.
Anyway hats off to AT&T for that pricing structure.
I've said this before and I'll say it again:
I have a cell phone which actually acts as a phone. No apps, no fantcy doodads, you put it to your ear and off you go. Am I crazy? Am I not "with it?"
Actually you are in the majority of cell phone users. Now, if by no apps you mean no texts that is admirable. As I posted earlier, I rather learned the hard way that receiving them can be out of one's control, though if you don't ever anticipate that one could be fine.
No, you're not out of it: 80% of the phone market uses the basic phone features. Even at the workplace now, SMS communications (text messages) are becoming used a lot more, and it's no longer just for the teenagers running up the parents' bill on the schoolbus. Actually, I was shocked to find that with T-Mobile unlimited text was now so incredibly cheap: an option I would never have considered five years ago.
interesting statistics because almost every comercial seems to urge us to turn our phones into computers, which is really odd in my opinion. Besides, the majority of these gizmows barely talk, beep, or display any notion of accessibility.
In mobile phones, Nokia owns the world, followed up by proprietary OS's like what Samsung and LG use.
You're right there is this constant encouragement to do so, and for some it makes sense: the Blackberry for the manager, or the Android with the sleek presentations for the marketing professional. But even the messaging phones have a calculator, a calendar, often a simple notepad and certainly phone book and related internal apps. They're the bread and butter of the mobile industry, like a conservative investment for your 401K, while the high--end phones that die in a year are the high-risk investments. There are people out there working just fine with a Nokia 6620 and older. And by Just fine, I mean doing more than you or I want to do on a phone.
All technology is sold to the most gadget-happy first, though. Look at the first release of iPhone and the pricing structure they did for that. I don't mean the 3GS but the original.
My issue, as a programmer/tech, and a blind one at that, is the lack of accessibility in this rapidly growing microcomputing world. These phones are just that, microcomputers. I guess I just don't see the need.
Simple TTS on the messaging phones isn't the hardest thing ever done, and would serve not just us but a wealth of other users. Modern phones, even the cheap kind, as they are have a lot of menus and alerts that need to be interacted with. Consequently the access to these devices needs to be thought of completely, rather than the band-aid to a lawsuit approach as done by LG. My example in my original posts about texts proves how what we think we won't need ends up being something we do need. Beyond that, if a setting was switched off by a glitch in the phone, something deep in the Settings and Tools submenu that LG didn't finish / consequently the TTS wasn't responding, I could not fix it. This happened more than once.
It is projected by several firms that within five years, the sales of mobile devices (including messaging phones) which give the user rich access will exceed that of computers. And with that will come the data plans used by said users. With that comes the societal expectations, and I don't mean fanboy stuff but professional and family / connection stuff which will accompany this.
At one time, cell phones were the luxury of the rich, and I remember as kids we all made fun of the guy showing off his giant potato-sized phone / making a call that cost $2 per minute, out in the open for all to see.
Now, even emergency preparedness recommendations for backpacking trips recommend taking a cell phone. Quite a few people were rescued in Haiti because they could send an SMS on a signal too low for a voice connection.
I stick by my original point: we as a community / one or more of the organizations need to work together to solve this problem and get access into at least one free phone on every carrier, making all the functions work properly.
It is all about design. Voice is not exactly in the flow charts, though I myself have a talking phone. More should be done if we are going to keep up with society.
Margorp you are correct speech may not have been in the core design in the past, however look at the article on
Nuance and IBM to Develop, Market and Deliver Speech Solutions for Ten Industries
and see what you think.
Speech is greener, thinner and many times takes less math to run than does video out, especially the fancy kind. With where you're at in college you've already done geometry on graphics to assign and maintain visual real estate, whereas when you add in a speech omponent using real TTS engines (there are some cheap ones coming out of Korea now), it's as simple as fopen the port and sprintf the text of the UI components, in logical order as are being presented, aka window / caption / focus / child. More than that to it, of course, but it's not the mammoth some have tried to make it out, at least not in closed systems like messaging phones typically are, where the user downloads no apps.
Speaking of IBM Research, you young studs in college that are comp sci majors need to start following them on Twitter / Facebook, and look for opportunities with them: It's research, it's new, and above all (you'll like this), you're not retrofitting new stuff on legacy systems like the rest of us working stiffs do in the commercial space. I've seen some amazing things come out of there: everything from nanotechnology to the use of the spin rather than the charge of the electrons for what they call Racetrack memory. That one I haven't seen anything on in a year, but still.
I have the Nokia 71, if I remember correctly, and it'll read my incoming messages, but doesn't talk me through sending one. Now, does that make any sense? Also, every plan I could get with that phone came with internet use, and the phone doesn't talk me through that either, so I'm basically spending a portion of my monthly bill on a feature I'll never use because I can't, unless I want to buy mobile Speak, which no Canadian cell phone provider seems to know anything about.
IBm's research thing has a captcha thing. Not accessible. Yuck
5That's why I have no respect for LG. The half-assed accessibility features just don't do it. But I'll have to remember about the forms with AT&T to wave the data plan since when the time comes to get a new phone I will more than likely go with the IPhone. True there'll be a lot of Aps I probably won't use but now that I'm getting the hang of Voiceover with the IPod Touch there will be plenty of them that I might use aside from the phone. And I really don't want to pay extra for a separate screen reader again. So the best solution, especially since I don't want to switch providers particularly at this point, is the IPhone. That and the Owasys 22C just seemed like a piece of crap, so I probably wouldn't get it even if they were still available. I mean yeah it's got nice big buttons (that I would have liked especially while getting used to my Nokia 6682's tiny buttons a few years back), and it doesn't advertise who's calling you to the world, but I didn't care one bit for the TTS voice and then I heard from a disturbing number of people who had owned and used the phone about how it only lasted them about a year or so before dying completely even though they took the best possible care of the unit, and how they could never get a hold of Capital Accessibility to find out what, if anything, could be done about the problem. So no, no dice as far as the 22C was concerned.
Yikes what a rip off. This is how they make money.
Yep. My friend Marissa was a 22C user for at least a year, but then the phone just went crazy on her and she left I believe no fewer than eight voicemails with Capital Accessibility with ne'ery a reply from Janina or anyone else. As far as I'm concerned that's bad customer service.
I don't see what the problem is with getting a phone that's just a phone. If all you need it for is to keep in touch with family, then why does it have to have texting and e-mail? I'm on a family plan with TMobile, so don't pay for my own service, but I opted to buy my own unlocked phone for $30 and it does exactly what I want it to do, make calls. It even has speech in it, allowing me to set the alarm and change the ring tone on my own. The only things lacking are the ability to check the battery status and to know who's calling by speech. I suppose a talking phone book couldn't hurt either, though I personally don't use them. My phone can text but since it's primary function is as a phone, I hear the lines are very small and only use lower case or upper, I forget which. But I wouldn't text even if I could and have never found a reason to do so. If people want me, they can call me or e-mail and I'll either answer the phone or check my e-mails from my IBM X32. In any case, my phone is the Motorola Motofone F3 if anyone wants to look it up. All that said, for those who really want all those extra features, I don't see why simple things like reading texts etc. can't be incorperated into a phone. If they can make all the other stuff talk, why not these things?
well, part of it is those phones that have built in text to speech really isn't quite acurate. it's wave files reading each of the menu options basically or something similar. since text messages are never the same thing it would be hard for a phone that was so basic to keep up with a message
Hmm, good point. I never thought of that.
And as I mentioned earlier, the reason for needing to read and handle texts is they are first more common now than ever (not just teenagers anymore), and second, sent to you; you have to handle it somehow. If you've the luxury of saying "Well if they want to contact me, they must ..." and fill in the blanks that's fine, but most of us use modes of communication to accomplish what we need, and what others need from us, not what we insist upon.
Oh, and FYI during the Haiti earthquake, because of SMS there were people rescued who would not have been before. That's because it requires much less signal, and for much less time, than attempting to voice communicate. We could have saved a lot more people after 9/11 if SMS (the protocol for text) had been more developed and in action at that time. So, like most things, you need to access it because you need to be able to read and interact with what's around.
I know several sighted people who don't text and they do just fine. I'm not saying it's a bad thing, for those who want it, but it's not an absolute necessity.
But you never know when an emergency might crop up, where you might not have enough celular signal to actually place a call but you do have enough to text. And if there's no other options readily available you might just need it.I agree. Definitely a lot more people could have been saved after 9/11 had the technology and protocol been more common. But it just so happens that most of the phones that are equipped to support and run screen readers, whether third-party or built-in as with the IPhone, also happen to possess lots of other applications like cameras ans things like that. It's up to each individual whether or not they bother to try to use them.
Don't those forms with ATNT disable the data plan, not make it free? I think if I had an I phone, (I'm thinking of getting one) I'd want the data plan...
In a few years all this may be moot, as phone sales / data plans are predicted to exceed computer sales (for the same tasks / purposes) in five years. A few years ago the carriers were whining because when every lmfao-writing teenager texted, they claimed it was a drain on their networks. And they charged everyone for it. Total unadulterated bs: SMS is packeted such that it's a one-time send one-time receive, no hops like what happens on the standard web (that means general bouncing around between available servers between the Zone and you), and their line was a total crock.
Getting data plans reasonably priced will be trickier and require some infrastructure, but when it's there my router of awesomeness that lets me smoke in my garage while having streaming movie or whatever to go with the work and / or brew out there will be material for only the "old tech" collectors.
OK that part isn't five years, but it is definitely on its way. So this may be moot as a data plan and a smart device like iPhone or (iI hope) Android devices, will be a really good investment for a lot of blind folks, low income or otherwise.
I don't know Robo, at this point, the companies want to milk it for all they are worth. Verizon is even talking about charging per meg rates for 4 g data when it comes out. At least sprint will do unlimited.
T-Mobile doesn't do that though. And non-U.S. carriers are the way to go as far as I'm concerned. The telecom companies in this country are even more stuck in the past than ... some on here who want to use 8088 processors ...
But that's not true for most of the world, including the third world.
I completely agree that the phones that most people use, especially the basic phones, need to be made accessible. One would think that if Apple could make their touch screens accessible to the blind, those other companies might get off their lazy asses and put in a screen reader into a basic phone. That's got to be much easier than implementing a screen reader into a touch-based phone like the iPhone.
tifinitsa, for one who hasn't ever texted, you really have no room to talk. it's obvious you don't realize how beneficial it is, especially at times you don't have enough signal to make/receive calls. it's quite idealistic to think you'll always be able to do that...but it appears your stuck in a time warp what with being so behind in the times, so...
When I go out, I leave my computer home for a reason. I don't need to be tied down to my mobile phone. I call whom I want and answer it when it rings and that's good enough for me. There are, as I've said, a few things that I wish would speak, but for the most part, I'm satisfied. As I've also said, I'm not the only one who doesn't text. There are people out there who don't even have a mobile phone and feel no reason to buy one. And Robo, I prefer 80486 and up, preferably at least a Pentium. *smile*
Tiff, I agree with you. I personally do not need all those bells and whistles. That said, I must admit that I have seen the benifits of texting...it's not just for idal chat.
No offense intended here, but I'm going to have to agree with fighter on this one. There are benefits for texting, and one of them is when you don't have enough signal and you have an emergency.
Here's another nice feature for texting, I often use a service called chacha, so, let's say I'm about to grill something and I'd like to know how long or what is the cooking instructions for a given food, a simple question sent to 242242 is met with a free response with an answer that instantly gives me some information that 2 minutes prior I didn't have!
My wife wasn't here about 3 weeks ago, and I was getting dinner ready I texted chacha asking for the cooking directions that appear on the package, and in 45 seconds I had a response, so just like that I have real life information.
The idea that texting is just idol chit chat is just not practical.
As I sit here at my work desk I have 4 phones, and a celular sitting here. Often to send a quick SMS is much simpler than making a phone call. Let's face it, this is the fast paced society we now find ourselves in.
exactly my point...but apparently some people think it's only idle chit chat we're talking about.
If you're blind and yet have learned enough to autofocus your camera / squeeze off a shot of an object, you can MMS it directly to someone who can either help you, or can tell you if that's the thing they need from you or whatever.
Employment situations use text messaging a lot, and to be honest, if sms had come first, the telephone as it is may have never happened, because voice telecommunication takes so damn much more infrastructure.
Just checked into Chacha. Post 33, that's brilliant!
Granted, that cooking one sounds really neat and useful, particularly because it's free. But there are also many websites that can be bookmarked with said information. It may take slightly longer to get it, but so long as you're working at home and not in a fast paced restaurant, it shouldn't really make a difference.
in order for that to work, you'd have to leave the kitchen or what ever to go to your computer, load the site, and do the search. if someone wants to make food, they want to do it sooner than later. i'm one who tries to do as much as i can with with computers, but that's pushing it
I guess I take having a laptop for granted. I could just bring it in the kitchen and look up the info before doing anything. That way, I can have it in front of me. I could also print it out on the Braille Blazer which was bought for me for under $300 and therefor have a hard copy so I could avoid messing up my tech.
I wouldn't bring my laptop in my kitchen for fear of having the microwave scramble it (it could happen.) Also, what if it fell on the floor or got food on it? No no that will never do! That is why I say that texting cooking thing is cool.
Yeah, that's why I love hard copy. lol If something gets on the paper and ruins it, you simply throw it out and reprint it. Aa! I'd hate it if my Thinkpad X32 got something on it!
ah yes, I have a braille blazer somewhere around here...
I can't go with that old technology anymore. You don't even need a Braille embosser these days, the way things are going. You can just get a laptop, Mac or Windows, put Window Eyes or Jaws on it, and read right off your Braille display. Heck, I'd rather have a laptop that I can carry around, rather than piles of papers laying around in my desk that I have to carry around in a bag. But that's just my preference. lol
I love my laptop with NVDA. It's really small and easy to carry, and of course, I can get recipes on there. The reason why I suggested the paper is to avoid messing up things like expensive braille displays or laptops. If you spill something or get ingredients on a paper it's not a problem. Very different story with tech.
Though you do have a very good point, it's not like the tech will break down right away when you spill something on it. Of course we'll have accidents once in a while, but just a little spill won't hurt the device. Since I've handled technology for quite a while, it would be safe to say this because that's I've spilled things on my BrailleNote, and even on my PAC Mate, and it didn't really hurt it. But of course they weren't those huge spills that would soak the device.
I have an lg nv 3. It's not the best phone in the world, but it takes calls, i can use the caller ID I can read and write text messages, and I fought for my case to have the data plan turned off, and they did. Maybe in a few years I'll swich to a different phone or carrior, but for now talking and texting is all I do with it. computer does the internet facebook etc. That's just fine for me.
Let me further my point a bit regarding Chacha it's not simply for cooking instructions it's for anything I wish to know.
For example, thursday I was in the pool store and they were trying to sell me something that I was pretty sure I didn't need to the tune of 42 bucks for our pool. I sort of remembered having read somewhere that the particular chemical wasn't all that important, so once again a simple text to 242242, and in 35 seconds, I had my answer, and I walked out of the store without wasting 42 bucks. Another instance where the ability to text was extremely worth while! So sure I could have carried my netbook in to the store with me, taken the time to open it up get my 3g running, and browse for the anser myself, but why do so when someone else on the end of a text message could grab the answer for me and make my day a bit more productive. so, without access to texting abilities, chances are, I walk out of the store 42 bucks poorer!
exactly!!
Exactly. And see, that's another benefit of texting.
I have eaten many words / much crow in the past year, what with me now using Facebook Twitter, and now texting to get information, all technologies I thought interesting from a programming perspective but of little use. You'd thought I'd know by now ... but 'be careful what you make fun of, lest yu need to start using it yourself'.
I know we find we often need this technology but it tends to sting a bit when they come with something different.
I am also a programmer and find it interesting but I need to be shown that it does some good.