Mobile Telephony and New Frontiers

By Ernesto Dini, photograph by Fabio Baraldi

Mobile Speak, surpassing the screen's barriers.

There has always been, between blind persons and the telephone, a perfect friendship: because of this, thousands of blind persons were able to find proper employment precisely in the telephone industry. But, recent technological innovations applied to the cellular have put a damper on this friendship, causing severe difficulties for the use by blind people of an instrument which is creating a true revolution in the field of distance communication and information. The last generation of cellular phones have become small computers making them easier to use by people who have sight and can look at the screen. Once again, blind people have taken the risk to be victims of progress, obligated as always to carry out superhuman efforts to surpass yet another barrier which appeared unsurmountable. Experts in the field have reflected on this, taking the bull by the horns, they have succeeded in developing a special software, Mobile Speak, which, equiped with a voice synthesis applied to the cellular phone, makes accessible and usable features such as: telephone list, SMS reading and writing, identification of a calling number, agenda, calculator, listening to MP3 music files, recording of sounds, setting of ringing tones, clock, alarm and so much more.
Willing to facilitate among its own users the diffusion of such a precious tool, the Istituto Cavazza has decided to offer an opportunity to make it easier to purchase the Mobile Speak software by providing the first 250 buyers, with a priority to ex-students, a contribution of 52 Euro on the price listed at 104 Euro. The distribution which began last October is still being carried out. It is hoped that the Istituto Cavazza, if it were to receive further requests, will want to make a new promotion in order to satisfy the greatest number of users as is possible.