Even those of us who don't gab on cell phones appreciate having one for an emergency. For a blind or visually impaired person, the Nokia N82 promises much more: It's a liberating day-to-day tool that grants access to printed materials not otherwise easily available.
A sightless person can use the phone to snap a picture of a menu, book, printed receipt or business card. Software on the phone processes the words on those items and reads the text aloud in a synthesized voice. The device can even let a blind person know if paper currency is a $5 or a $20 bill.
As you might expect, the candy-bar-shaped Nokia houses an extremely capable digital camera -- 5 megapixels, auto-focusing, high-intensity flash. But it's the character-recognition and text-to-speech software from KNFB Reading Technology that makes it so powerful. KNFB is a joint venture of the National Federation of the Blind and Kurzweil Technologies.
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