All, Firstly thanks for all of your replies. As well, below is appended is a reply that I received from RIM regarding blackberry accessibility. You may find it of interest. --- From: Accessibility Inquiries [mailto:Accessibility@xxxxxxx] Sent: Friday, October 19, 2007 7:27 AM Subject: BlackBerry Accessibility Inquiry Hello Peter, Thank you for your inquiry concerning the use of BlackBerry devices for a person who is blind. Please note that BlackBerry devices themselves operate on the Java2 Micro Edition platform (J2ME) and screen reading applications for mobile phones do not currently support J2ME. As such, BlackBerry devices themselves are not fully accessible by the blind. We have entered into a strategic alliance with HumanWare to help build an alternative access solution for BlackBerry devices for our blind customers. We just announced this relationship at the NFB Convention in Atlanta earlier in the summer and solutions will be commercially available some time in 2008. More information will be made publicly available as applicable. In the interim, BlackBerry customers with severe vision loss can take advantage of our BlackBerry Connect product offering. This solution enables customers to experience BlackBerry push technology and leverage their existing BlackBerry infrastructure investment on 3rd party handsets from vendors such as Palm, Motorola, Samsung, Nokia and others. Internally within RIM, we have conducted performance and usability tests with a number of these 3rd party handsets running BlackBerry Connect and 3rd party screen readers including TALKS, Mobile Speak and PocketHAL. Based on these tests, and ongoing customer feedback, we would recommend the following solution: · BlackBerry Connect for Symbian OS · Nokia E62 Smartphone · CodeFactory Mobile Speak Screen Reader or Nuance TALKS For more information on this solution, please refer to the following additional resources: * BlackBerry Connect for Symbian OS - http://na.blackberry.com/eng/devices/enabled/os.jsp#tab_tab_symbian * Business Case Study - BlackBerry Connect for Symbian OS - http://blackberry.com/products/pdfs/Symbian_CS_BBC_final.pdf * Nuance TALKS Screen Reader - http://www.nuance.com/talks/ · Code Factory Mobile Speak - http://www.codefactory.es/mobile_speak/mspeak.htm · Service (Rogers Wireless) - http://www.shoprogers.com/store/wireless/services/web_browsing/blackberry/blackberry_connect.asp · Service (Fido) - http://www.fido.ca/portal/domore/sdp_email_blackberry.jsp?lang=en I hope this information proves helpful. Please let me know if you have any questions. Cheers, BlackBerry Accessibility accessibility@xxxxxxx http://www.blackberry.com/accessibility -----Original Message----- From: Peter Quaiattini Sent: Thursday, October 18, 2007 4:05 PM To: 'programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx' Subject: Accessible Blackberry? The DBA team that I am a member of is going to be using the now famous Blackberry to do pageouts and for severity 1 alerts. To the best of my knowledge, this technology is not accessible - does anyone have any information to the contrary or how the Blackberry can be made to talk? Regards, Peter ------------------------------ IMPORTANT NOTICE - AVIS IMPORTANT ------------------------------ Computer viruses can be transmitted via email. Recipient should check this email and any attachments for the presence of viruses. Sender and sender company accept no liability for any damage caused by any virus transmitted by this email. This email transmission and any accompanying attachments contain confidential information intended only for the use of the individual or entity named above. Any dissemination, distribution, copying or action taken in reliance on the contents of this email by anyone other than the intended recipient is strictly prohibited. If you have received this email in error please immediately delete it and notify sender at the above email address. Le courrier electronique peut etre porteur de virus informatiques. Le destinataire doit donc passer le present courriel et les pieces qui y sont jointes au detecteur de virus. L' expediteur et son employeur declinent toute responsabilite pour les dommages causes par un virus contenu dans le courriel. Le present message et les pieces qui y sont jointes contiennent des renseignements confidentiels destines uniquement a la personne ou a l' organisme nomme ci-dessus. Toute diffusion, distribution, reproduction ou utilisation comme reference du contenu du message par une autre personne que le destinataire est formellement interdite. Si vous avez recu ce courriel par erreur, veuillez le detruire immediatement et en informer l' expediteur a l' adresse ci-dessus. ------------------------------ IMPORTANT NOTICE - AVIS IMPORTANT ------------------------------ __________ View the list's information and change your settings at //www.freelists.org/list/programmingblind