Global initiative to help people with disabilities find the best cellphone

Stuart Corner
Wednesday, 24 June 2009 13:09

Business IT - Technology

The mobile phone industry has developed a worldwide information service, and website, for reporting the accessibility features of mobile phones, to enable people with disabilities of all kinds to find phones that best meet their needs.

The Global Accessibility Reporting Initiative (GARI) includes a new website - www.mobileaccessibility.info - which will allow consumers to search for a mobile phone model that suits their specific accessibility requirements. It is an initiative of the global Mobile Manufacturers Forum (MMF) that has been under development for over a year and is now being formally launched around the world.

Australia was one of the first cabs off the rank with communications minister, senator Stephen Conroy, and parliamentary secretary for disabilities, Bill Shorten, announcing the initiative in conjunction with the MMF and the Australian Mobile Telecommunications Association (AMTA).

AMTA executive director Chris Althaus, told iTWire: "We are one of the first: there will be some action in the European Parliament next week." He added: "We have strong relationship with the MMF so we decided to prevail on minister Conroy to launch it. We have been involved in the development and through some of the accessibility groups such as Tedicore [Telecommunications and Disability Consumer Representation] have been helping in road-testing some of the ideas and looking at the data base and they continue to be involved in an advisory way."

Althaus said AMTA would prominently display the new website on behalf of its members to assist Australians with a disability gain access to mobile telecommunications equipment that suited their particular needs.

He explained how different phone features could affect usability for disabled people for better or worse. "For example, people with limited or low vision, or who are blind, may find useful a phone that flips open and answers automatically. Or for people with arthritis or limited dexterity, a 'candy bar' of 'stick' phone may be useful to avoid the need for added movements, such as sliding or flipping open the phone to use it."

MMF hopes to build GARI into a comprehensive database of available models with their features specified against a standard template. The template is available to download and Althaus said it would be up to manufacturers to complete it for each new model and submit it to GARI so the features could be uploaded to the database. "[it is] a comprehensive 90 question accessibility features template detailing every feature of a new phone, from screen, font and button size to audio and volume controls."

He told iTWire that Nokia and Motorola had been strong initial supporters. "Nokia have put a number of models up, as have Motorola, Samsung are on the way and we will be working through the smartphone category." He added "everybody has some sort of accessibility feature list but our database is designed to link these to specific disabilities."

He said there were also plans for GARI to take a pro-active role in influencing the design of phones to better suit the needs of people with disabilities, for example conducting research to determine the optimum ringtone for people with certain hearing limitations.