/ 7 September 2004

Vodacom launches SA’s first speaking cellphone

South Africa’s largest mobile telecommunications group, Vodacom, on Tuesday unveiled the country’s first initiative to make cellular communications accessible to all South Africans, especially people with disabilities.

The Speaking Phone initiative was launched under the theme Specific Needs. The phone enables blind people to access voice and text services via text-to-speech technology. The group has also established a call centre that will be accessible to people with specific needs or disabilities.

The service is available for both pre-paid and contract subscribers. The speaking phone — a Nokia 6600 handset with text-to-speech software — allows blind and partially blind users access to data services via audible display.

It boasts user-friendly yet advanced technology encompasses text messages and phone-book entries, and indicates battery life and signal strength.

The handset is valued at a cash retail price of about R3 000 for pre-paid subscribers while it costs R135 per month for contract users. It is available at Vodashops countrywide.

Vodacom chose this particular handset (Nokia 6600) because of its size, shape and screen.

“The communications revolution that has changed the lives of some 20-million South African cellular customers over the past decade has gone largely unnoticed by the several million South Africans living with disabilities and who would potentially benefit most from this technology,” Vodacom Group’s chief communications officer, Mthobi Tyamzashe, said at the launch of the initiative

The launch was attended by a number of people with specific needs and their organisations.

South African Federal Council on Disability president Dorothy-Anne Howitson said her organisation supports any initiative aimed at giving people living with disabilities greater personal freedom.

She hailed Vodacom for bringing thousands more South Africans into the mobile telephony fold, given the fact that cellular technology offers people more control over their lives.

Vodacom is the globe’s second operator — after its United Kingdom-based shareholder and world’s largest mobile network Vodafone Group — to launch speaking-phone services.

The initiative is endorsed by the South African National Council for the Blind (SANCB) and is expected to increase the level of access to mobile communications among visually impaired people.

SANCB executive director Dr William Rowland said: “We are very grateful to see Vodacom leading by example and making the Speaking Phone available to the blind and visually impaired. This is critical to building a united South Africa whose people benefit equally from the technological developments witnessed in cellular communications.”

He commended the mobile group for designing something that will appeal not just to the blind but other sectors of society too. He concurred that the initiative will make “an enormous difference in our lives and bridge the distance and the digital divide”.

Through its corporate social investment arm, the group has further invested in several initiatives that include the Quadriplegic Association of South Africa, Retina South Africa and an eyesight restoration programme. The network is also the official sponsor of the South African Paralympic team. — I-Net Bridge