Smart phones are the hottest products in the markets now a days and they making good money. Smart phones are attracting more and more people due the vast variety of available application for general use. Almost every type of application is available for smart phone which was available for computer in near past. More and more people of becoming big fans of these type of applications which are available everywhere and can be accessed by just a single touch of the smart phone screen.
But the question arise when it comes to highlight the visually impaired community which consists of 285 million people across the globe. How these people will become an active part of the community by using the smart phones? Because, even in Pakistan if we visit the nearby market place for mobile phones, we will hardly find 2% smart phones which have qwerty keyboard or a keypad. All other smart phones are having large touch screens without any button or they only have one big button which will push everything back to main screen.
Apple and Samsung are the most popular smart phones companies and most of the models presented by these companies are not usable for any visually impaired or blind person. Apple only creating IPhone which is 100% touch screen with only a large button to move back to main screen but Samsung has few more models like Samsung epic 4g which also has a qwerty keyboard.
PC world has shared a very beautiful list of smart phones which are having qwerty keyboard or keypad, please visit this link:
There are couple of applications available on the internet which are making this possible for the visually impaired and blind community to use the smart phones with screen reading applications.
I would like to share a mobile accessibility two in one product that might help this community to use the smart phones.
A suite of 10 accessible applications like Phone, Contacts, SMS, Alarm, Calendar, Email, Web, Where am I, Apps and Settings which have been especially designed for the blind and visually impaired.
A screen reader which allows you to get out of the suite and navigate the standard interface of your phone.
Please visit the under given URL for a complete list of available applications:
Mobile Accessibility and other accessible Android apps
There are screen reading applications available for the smart phones and there are smart phones with qwerty keyboard but still its a big question are we neglecting visually impaired and blind community by creating smart phones? Please share your valuable comments and suggest more and more solutions if they are available on the internet so that we can help this community to become an active part of the society.
