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.