Vodacom South Africa has introduced a range of Nokia handsets for the visually impaired. The phones convert texts to speech and enlarge texts to make them more visible.
The phones, designed for customers with eye problems, include the Nokia C6 Zooms phone, Nokia E6 and Nokia C6 speaking phones. All these phones have a qwerty keyboard and a touch screen and come with a preloaded Talks software.
“This software converts text to speech, enabling visually-impaired customers to view, create and edit contacts, send and receive SMS or e-mail messages, and obtain signal and battery strength,” Vodacom said.
For the Nokia C6 Zooms phone, preloaded Zooms software is present, which magnifies font sizes to enable users with low vision to access their phones.
“Things have moved on from the days of just using a cellphone to make a call and, with this new range of smartphones, visually-impaired customers can also take that next step and unlock the power of the Internet via mobile,” said Chris Ross, Managing executive of commercial development at Vodacom.
Vodacom also released a recommended retail price for the phones. It however leaves the ultimate price on the retail outlets. The prepaid market will pay about R2,699 for the Nokia C6 speaking phone, R4,299 for the Nokia E6 speaking phone, and the Nokia C6 Zooms phone at R2,699.
Contract customers will pay around R135 per month for Nokia C6 speaking phone, while the Nokia E6 speaking phone contract goes for about R179 per month, and the Nokia C6 Zooms phone at about R135 per month.
