The iPhone Comes to Verizon Wireless
On Tuesday, January 11, 2011, news broke confirming the rumors that Verizon Wireless will soon be carrying the iPhone. Reports say that they will be carrying the iPhone 4, and it will include the same VoiceOver screen reader, Zoom magnification, and other accessibility features built into the iPhones that have been available from AT&T.
Verizon Wireless will offer 16 and 32 GB models of the iPhone 4. According to its web site, AT&T will allow existing customers to pre-order an iPhone "on or around" February 3. Then, on February 10, new and existing customers will be able to purchase the iPhone 4. They plan to confirm these details about a week beforehand. AT&T customers who already have an iPhone will not be able to switch over their service to Verizon on their existing iPhone.
As the Verizon iPhone rumor was being confirmed, new rumors began circulating that the iPhone 5 will be out sometime this summer, and that both AT&T and Verizon will be carrying it.
AT&T to Study Synthesized Speech
AT&T Labs — Research, with the cooperation of the standards committee on text-to-speech synthesis systems of the Acoustical Society of America, is running a web-based experiment to evaluate the intelligibility of synthesized speech for people who have been legally blind from six years of age or younger. This experiment includes most of the text-to-speech engines on the market today, and the results will be used to improve the usability of text-to-speech for people with visual disabilities.
If you would like to participate or learn more, visit the experiment website.
The experiment pages have been tested for JAWS compatibility.
If you have questions or suggestions, please contact:
Amanda Stent
AT&T Labs — Research
Florham Park, NJ 07932
E-mail: stent@research.att.com
Phone: 973-360-7222
GW Micro to Offer Free Training Webinars
GW Micro is offering a free webinar once a month during 2011. The schedule is posted, with the first training concerning what's coming in the next version of Window-Eyes. All webinars take place the second Wednesday of the month at 2:00 EST. Once Daylight Savings Time begins, the webinars will be at 1:00 DST. For more information, log onto the GW Micro-Webinar Training page.
