Busy couple of weeks for Smart Hal

Your feedback following the Smart Hal release has been very encouraging. We have received lots of great comments and questions, along with some superb suggestions! Thank you. By all means keep it coming.

The Smart Hal software and the Smart Hal user guide have been translated into: Belgium Dutch, Czech, Dutch, German, Italian, Swedish as well as being available for UK and US English. Today Dolphin have added Smart Hal in Croatian! As the translation work continues Dolphin hope to announce more languages very soon.

When Dolphin have been out at conferences and exhibitions, whether it is a big event like the Assistive Technology Industry Association held in Orlando in January or the California State University Conference on disability and Technology in L.A. in March, or even at a more modest event such as a Sight Advice Day held in the North of England a couple of weeks ago, it has been really exciting to hear the enthusiasm for Smart Hal.

People are saying they like the piece of mind which comes from no cross grade fees. Once you buy a Smart Hal license it is yours! No hidden charges if you decide to change your mobile phone. The familiar Eloquence synthesizer is popular with many of you already used to Eloquence. Orpheus and Acapela are also available. If there is a particular voice you would like Smart Hal to feature do let us know. People are telling us that the simple Smart Hal Control Panel and hotkeys are easy to use. With an extensive international dealer network and offices in the UK, US and Sweden, fulltime professional support, should you ever need it, is only an email or phone call away.

However, it is not just at exhibitions where Smart Hal is attracting attention, the Dolphin Sales team have reported lots of interest in Smart Hal both over the phone and via email too. So once again thank you for your support and interest, do keep it coming.

While it is always great to hear positive feedback, no new software is perfect. Work on Smart Hal continues and Dolphin are listening closely to your feedback and intend to make Smart Hal updates available in the coming weeks.

Date of post: Wed, 30 May 2007. 14:51:10 GMT

How to get connected to the Net with your Smartphone

A couple of people have asked me about using email and the web with Smart Hal, so I figured it may be useful to describe the various ways in which you can get access to the internet using your Windows Mobile Smartphone. As you would expect, Smart Hal will talk you through every step in this process.

The availability and reliability of your internet connection will vary depending on the method you use to connect and your provider. For network specific settings you should contact your cellular operator and/or internet service provider depending on how you intend to connect.

I am aware of four main methods for getting online using a Windows Mobile Smartphone:

1. Using Active sync.
Providing your desktop or laptop has a connection to the internet, while your phone is connected to the PC by default the Internet connection should be shared with your Smartphone. Generally this will be the quickest and easiest method for gaining access to the Internet.

2. Connecting to a WiFi network or hotspot.
If your phone has a WiFi adapter built-in and WiFi is enabled in the Smartphone comm manager then your Smartphone should report the existence of any nearby wireless networks which are broadcasting their SSID. This will usually be the case with public hotspots. You can setup a wireless connection manually from Connections found under Settings. Wireless internet availability may be limited and obviously you will lose your internet connection if you move out of range of your wireless router or hotspot.

3. Via the mobile phone operator using GPRS or 3G.
This will depend on your being subscribed to an appropriate mobile phone data plan. Some providers offer unlimited data for a fixed amount each month, while others charge by the amount of data sent and received. To avoid unexpected charges it is important you are clear about your provider's data costs before proceeding. Note, data charges while roaming can be expensive.

You will need to setup an access point in your Smartphone's connection settings in order for this to work. Your mobile phone network operator should be able to provide you with access settings.

For example, to set up an internet access connection point for Orange UK using the HTC Meteor - From the Home Screen: press LEFTSOFT for Start, 9 for Settings, 6 for Connections, 5 for GPRS, RIGHTSOFT for Menu, 1 for Add. In the connection point dialog set: Connects to the internet, Accesspoint orangeinternet, leave the username and password fields empty, set primary and secondary DNS to 158.43.192.1 and leave the IP field empty. Press LEFTSOFT when Done. Your mileage may vary depending on your device and operator.

4. Dial-up Inernet Access.
Typically this will be relatively slow and will require your having a dial-up internet access account with an internet service provider. Additionally you are likely to be charged for the amount of time you spend online. However, this may be a backup option in the event that none of the other connection methods are available.

Setting up a dial-up internet connection is done from Settings/Connections in a similar way to setting up a GPRS connection. The difference being you are more likely to require a username and password as well as a phone number. Moreover, you are unlikely to be able to receive incoming phone calls while connected to the internet using a dial-up connection.

If you are using options 3 or 4, a little 'Googling around' should find the specific settings for your particular network. Simply follow the steps described above entering the specific information for your mobile phone network.

Date of post: Thu, 3 May 2007. 14:44:43 GMT

Smart Hal makes it to Singapore

Dolphin software is used by people who are blind, low vision or dyslexic around the globe. And it would appear that the first release of Smart Hal is continuing this tradition with localized versions of Smart Hal in the UK, US and Sweden, plus more languages to follow very soon!

it was exciting to hear yesterday that folk in Singapore are also enthusiastic about Smart Hal! And before people have used up their 30-day demonstration period, orders have started to come in from around the world.

Thank you everyone for your positive response to Smart Hal. Dolphin are continuing to work on Smart Hal and your feedback is an important part of that process. If you have any comments or suggestions please do not hesitate to contact your Dolphin.

Date of post: Tue, 24 Apr 2007. 10:50:47 GMT

Smart Hal maps

Improving support for third-party applications.

Dolphin Map files contain instructions which can improve the functionality of Dolphin's screen reading software such as Smart Hal when working with third-party software. This means that you can install extra software on your Smartphone which will expand the range of things you can do with your handset.

As part of Dolphin's commitment to increase the range of supported applications in Smart Hal, Dolphin have this week posted three beta Smart Hal map files which improve Smart Hal support for a trio of useful applications. The applications are Microsoft Live Search, Osymo Smartphone Text Editor and the AudiblePlayer.

For more information about these applications and to download beta maps for your Smartphone visit the Smart Hal Beta Maps page.

Date of post: Fri, 20 Apr 2007. 13:31:56 GMT

Hotkeys hotkeys hotkeys

In this post I will attempt to explore how screen reader hotkey thinking informed the design of Smart Hal's hotkey layout.

Anyone who has had to use screen reading software for Microsoft Windows will be aware of the sometimes contentious discussions surrounding the choice of the many hotkeys which will perform screen reading functions. Which keys should be chosen? Do the choice of keys make sense to users? Are additional screen reader modifier keys necessary? Can the hotkey set be logically extended in the future? What kind of finger gymnastics are required to issue the various hotkey commands? Is it clear to users and trainers which hotkeys are operating system and application dependent and which hotkeys belong to the screen reading software? How many hotkeys do we really need? Would it be simpler and more fun to just pull hotkeys out of a hat? Answers on a postcard please.

I am sure experienced screen reader users can find numerous examples of where screen access products have boxed themselves into hotkey corners. I can think of obvious examples from the three leading commercial screen readers where the manufacturer has chosen hotkeys which: duplicate Windows functionality, keys which clash with windows application hotkeys or key combination which require the user to be double-jointed. Hence the ability to toggle on and off screen reader hotkeys, and the ability in all the leading commercial screen readers to reconfigure their default hotkeys. However, with each of the three leading commercial screen readers featuring literally hundreds of hotkey commands it has all got more than just a tad confusing!

As bleak as this situation may sound, desktop Windows screen access software designers have had a relatively easy ride when it comes to selecting default screen reader hotkeys. LEFT CONTROL, LEFT SHIFT, LEFT ALT, RIGHT CONTROL, RIGHT SHIFT, RIGHT ALT, LEFT WINDOWS, RIGHT WINDOWS, APPLICATION, plus at least one designated screen reader key (often INSERT or CAPS LOCK) and any combination of all of the above are all available as modifiers which can be used in conjunction with any one of the dozens of alphabetic, numeric, mathematic, punctuation, navigation and function, ESCAPE and TAB keys which are typically available on most computer keyboards. Even discounting all the Windows and Office keys which are already in use, restricting the range to keystrokes involving 3 or less fingers and disregarding other impractical combinations, desktop screen reader designers have had a relatively blank canvas when picking their hotkeys. Contrast this with a Smartphone which is likely to have less than twenty buttons in total with no native modifiers.

As an aside, when I have provided one-on-one demonstrations of Dolphin's Hal screen reader for desktop Windows, new users are often pleasantly surprised that in both Hal's default desktop and laptop keyboard layouts it is possible to perform many screen reading functions such reading the current character, word, line, focus, window, application status bar and document read all with single one-finger key presses without requiring a modifier key. It is also possible to use the same single-finger key presses to get phonetic, font, colour and other style information about many of these elements. This is vital for the vast majority of blind people who tend to be elderly and often experience arthritis or other dexterity difficulties or for young children whose hands are still growing and may find more complex key combinations difficult to reach. Anyway, I digress.

When designing dolphin's Windows Mobile Smartphone screen reader Smart Hal, as well as having to cherry pick which of desktop Hal's speech, style and verbosity features were going to make it into Smart Hal and which Smartphone screen reader specific features we would have to develop from scratch, we had to make some very careful choices about which hotkeys we were going to use in the first release. Clearly we wanted a product which would not interfere with the "normal" functionality of the Smartphone user's ability to make and receive calls. At the same time we did not want users to have to go off into a Smart Hal control panel every time they wanted to perform a simple screen reading function like change the speech volume or check the battery status. Simplicity, consistency with the Smartphone UI and a degree of familiarity were also important considerations.

What may seem great in theory to us kicking around various ideas in the office really needed to be practical in real world use. So at the end of August last year I decided for Smart Hal to really going to deliver I should try to help design Smart Hal to be a product which I would use every day and would have hotkeys which were easy to find and press.

The Smart Hal hotkeys may not be perfect and they need to change some day but right now Smart Hal has a familiar hotkey set which is straightforward for users to learn and can logically be expanded in the future.

Date of post: Fri, 20 Apr 2007. 11:22:20 GMT

Microsoft enthused about Smart Hal

"Microsoft is excited about the recent release of Smart Hal", says Daniel Hubbell, Technical Evangelist for Microsoft's Accessible Technology Group. "It is exciting that people who are blind or low vision are guaranteed high quality and reliable access to the current line of Smartphones powered by Windows Mobile 5 and the upcoming generation of Smartphones running Windows Mobile 6. It is through innovative first-to-market software like Smart Hal and their strong partnership with Microsoft that Dolphin continues to ensure that visually impaired people have access to the latest phones on the market."

Dolphin very much appreciate Microsoft's continued support of Dolphin's mobile product line. Windows Mobile provides A.T. companies such as Dolphin with a framework which allows us to create solutions which enable people who are blind to use mainstream technology from main stream suppliers at mainstream prices.

Date of post: Thu, 19 Apr 2007. 09:17:26 GMT

Smart Hal now in Swedish!

In addition to UK and US language versions of Smart Hal, Dolphin have now released Smart Hal in Swedish! Download your free 30 day Swedish demo from the main dolphin website.

Dolphin are rightly proud of our language support across our access range. version 7 desktop products are available in 16 languages!

Watch this space as more Smart Hal languages will be available very soon.

Date of post: Wed, 18 Apr 2007. 16:43:43 GMT

Contacting Dolphin in the US

Maybe you heard our Smart Hal presentation on the ACB Radio Main Menu technology show and want to contact Dolphin in the US. Naturally contact details are available on the main Dolphin website. However, for your convenience:

Dolphin Computer Access Inc.
231 Clarksville Road
Suite 3
Princeton Junction
NJ 08550
USA

Local: 609 803 2171
Toll free: 866 797 5921
Support: 888 519 4694
Fax: 609 799 0475

info@dolphinusa.com

Date of post: Wed, 18 Apr 2007. 19:25:04 GMT

Smart Hal on ACB Radio's Main Menu

Later tonight when most people in the UK will be in bed, ACB Radio will be featuring Dolphin's screen reader for Windows Mobile Smartphones on their Main Menu technology show. ACB Radio will be offering the programme on-demand and it will also be available as an ACB Radio podcast. You can also download the presentation right here from the Smart Hal blog.

Download the MP3 audio file: Smart Hal on ACB Radio's Main Menu

Date of post: Tue, 17 Apr 2007. 09:23:59 GMT

Mention by Microsoft

Just a quick thanks to Dan Hubbell of the Microsoft Assistive Technology Group for his mention of Smart Hal on his blog.
http://blogs.msdn.com/danhub/archive/2007/03/19/assistive-technology-vendors-highlighted.aspx

Date of post: Mon, 16 Apr 2007. 12:13:18 GMT

Help finding a phone

With so many phones and mobile service plans to choose from it is sometimes difficult to know where to start. Dolphin have provided a list of Smart Hal compatible Windows Mobile Smartphones on the Dolphin web site.

Additionally, to help people when searching for phones it is important to clearly understand the advantages and disadvantages of contract, pay as you go and SIM Free phones.

Contract involves taking out a regular monthly subscription to a particular service plan resulting in the initial cost for the handset being heavily subsidized. Advantages include low initial cost for the handset, disadvantages include limited choice of handsets and an on-going monthly payment.

Pay As You Go means buying mobile phone airtime in advance. Advantages include no monthly contract and the ability to control your monthly spending, disadvantages limited number of handsets to choose from and higher initial cost of phone.

SIM free is a phone which is not tied to any particular network, giving you the freedom to use an existing contract or Pay as You Go SIM. Advantages, widest choice of handsets and networks, disadvantages high initial cost for the phone.

Useful links:
The following are price comparison web sites with deals on Contract, Pay as You Go and SIM Free phones in the UK. Make a short list of handsets in which you are interested from our compatibility list, you may also want to visit a local mobile phone shop in order to get a feel for each handset. Then use these price comparison sites to search for the best deal on your chosen phone.

Price Runner:
http://www.pricerunner.co.uk/t/8/compare-Mobile-Phones-prices

OneCompare
http://www.onecompare.com/

Money Supermarket
http://www.moneysupermarket.com/MobilePhones/default.aspx

GSM Arena
http://www.gsmarena.com/

And if you are upgrading to a Windows Mobile Smartphone you can make money by recycling your old mobile phone:
http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/cgi-bin/viewnews.cgi?newsid1145619416,13446

If you know of additional resources which you have found to be useful by all means feel free to make suggestions by contacting us.

As someone once said, it's good to talk!

Date of post: Mon, 16 Apr 2007. 10:10:17 GMT

Test certificates

In order to install software successfully on Windows Mobile Smartphones, without the Smartphone complaining that the software has not been certified with a digital signature, it is necessary for applications like Smart Hal to be digitally signed. Naturally for all mobile products made available to the public via the Dolphin web site we have already made sure that Dolphin have digitally signed the components of the Smart Hal software which are installed to your Windows Mobile Smartphone. This tells your Smartphone that Smart Hal is from a trusted source.

However, the process of digitally signing software can be time consuming and there is a cost to the software developer. So during the private beta testing phase of Smart Hal's development, Dolphin supplied our testers with digital test certificates so that we did not waste time and customers money digitally signing every single beta version.

The downside to test certificates is that if a tester needs to hard reset there phone during testing, it is necessary to install the test certificates again before it is possible to install another beta version of Smart Hal. This can present a chicken and egg situation as many of our beta testers are blind and it is difficult, not impossible, to install the test certificates without a functional Smartphone screen reader active.

It was quite gratifying to receive the following note from one of our beta testers following the public release of Smart Hal:

"I'm rather attached to my Smartphone now. I can reset it and have it talking again and keep all my contacts without any element of trial and error with those test certificates."

Yay for ActiveSync!

Date of post: Thu, 12 Apr 2007. 17:41:23 GMT

Trying third-party software with Smart Hal

The first reason why people are choosing Windows Mobile Smartphones running Smart Hal is simply because it is often difficult to see the screen of a mobile phone and Smart Hal makes all the features and functions of a modern cell phone fully accessible for people who are blind, partially sighted or just want a talking mobile phone.

However, a talking mobile phone is just the start! One of the beauties of Windows Mobile Smartphones is that a rich variety of third-party software is available which can add extra functionality to your mobile phone. Dolphin are planning to feature a selection of this third-party software on the Dolphin website. Naturally we cannot guarantee the functionality of all third-party software but if we find an application which works well and is popular with our users you can be sure it will get a mention here.

So if you are trying Smart Hal with any third-party software then we would love to hear from you!

What is the name of the Smartphone application you are trying? Where can people get it? Does it cost and if so how much? Is there a free demo version available? And most importantly how well does it work with Smart Hal?

Date of post: Tue, 10 Apr 2007. 16:51:15 GMT

Not dead and WM6

Hi All,
Nope I am really not dead! You don't get rid of me that easily. Many thanks to my esteemed colleague for posting here at the back end of last week though. Much obliged to you Luke! Isn't this the part where I'm supposed to say something really inspirational about working as part of a really close team being one of the perks of being at Dolphin? :)

Anyway, as you may have read on the Dolphin home page, we are now making Smart Hal available as a public download for the very first time! And we are very excited to announce that Smart Hal is the first Mobile Phone screen reader to announce support for Windows Mobile 6! I have been itching to tell you about the WM6 thing for a little while now, But a very serious man told me I couldn't.

Anyway, look at the time! I promise to make more time to bring the blog up to date in the next couple of days.

Date of post: Tue, 3 Apr 2007. 17:34:54 GMT

Stepping in to fill the void

Luke asks, is Dave dead?

Don't panic, Dave is fine!
My colleague, Mr. Williams, is having a well-earned rest after jet-setting around the world to CSUN in LA and back. I will be writing today's blog. You will have to excuse me if I digress slightly from the usual direction that these blogs take, I work in the Marketing department not product development. But don't let Dave fool you; it's not just the guys creating the product itself that go into overdrive when a product release is fast approaching.

Let me direct you to the Smart Hal product page and the "other information" section on www.YourDolphin.com. Here you will find a useful article entitled "Smartphone or Pocket PC?" - very useful if you are deliberating over which one to buy. Next, (something which I am particularly proud of) you can find a comprehensive list of all the Smartphones that are compatible with Smart Hal. As you will see, there are a lot of phones to choose from and I hope you will find it useful if you are looking to buy a Smartphone. My colleagues from the "meet the team" pages will be in touch soon with their own personal recommendations. Also in other information you can read "10 things you should know about Smartphones", "How to get Smart Hal on your phone" and you can even listen to Smart Hal voice samples.

There are lots of other tasks that we busy ourselves with when it comes to the release of a new product, press releases, user feedback, promotional literature, etc, etc, but I wont go into all that. I just wanted to give you a gentle nudge towards the Smart Hal pages on the website in case you hadn't visited them yet, and to let you know of all the information available.

Don't forget to check back to the blog site on Monday for Dave's return!

Date of post: Fri, 30 Mar 2007. 16:04:52 GMT

Smart Hal at CSUN

Note to self, check Smartphone content before presentations.

We have had a week off the blog in order to take Smart Hal to the California State University Technology and Persons with Disabilities Conference held in Los Angeles. Dolphin were delighted with the enthusiastic response from hundreds of visitors to the Dolphin booth in the exhibit area, plus an extremely healthy turn out to the Getting Smart with Smart Hal presentation on Friday morning.

During presentations we use a fabulous piece of software called Pocket Controller which allows us to show the contents of the Smartphone display via the projector. This is great as the sighted people in the audience are then able to follow along with the people who are blind who are listening to the synthetic speech.

A few years ago a Liverpool based soap opera - Brookside, featured a larger than life character Sinbad. Recently the actor, Michael Starke, has made an appearance in another UK soap - Coronation Street. During Friday's Smart Hal presentation I opened a text message on my Smartphone from my sister - which, as well as wishing me well with my trip to L.A., included the sentence "Btw Sinbad is in Corry!" Hmm, think my audience may have been ever so slightly confused? Although any explanation at the time would have probably just baffled people further, so I left it hanging out there for peoples' imaginations to make of it what they would!

Other than that the rest of the presentation went almost exactly to plan. We even got streaming audio from Virgin Radio to play right into the hall via the Smartphone. People were glad that Dolphin has extended the range of phones which are now fully accessible for people who are blind. There was lots of excitement that finally the familiar Eloquence text to speech synthesizer is now available on the Smartphone platform. Additionally, we fielded lots of questions from people keen to learn more about Smartphones themselves. And finally, everyone seemed to unanimously agree that Smart Hal is easy to use.

So an encouraging week then. Thank you to everyone who came to visit Dolphin in L.A. And for those of you who could not make it, have no fear, the Smart Hal blog is back!

Date of post: Tue, 27 Mar 2007. 11:47:43 GMT

Smart Hal meetings

It is important to strike a balance between spending time working on Smart Hal and making sure that everyone is heading in the same general direction. If email was the most effective way to communicate then non of us would need to come into work in the morning. As it is, face to face meetings can be useful in understanding what is and is not achievable, how much development time would be involved and what should and should not take priority.

Smart Hal meetings can be Torrid affairs! With me on the one hand wanting everything to work perfectly - yesterday, and on the other hand harassed developers who have to figure out how long my wish list is likely to take. Some of my colleagues appreciate these experiences more than others! However, it is important that developers take notice of feedback from our testers and get a feel for what would make Smart Hal easy to use and that our finite development hours are focused on the most important issues which will provide tangible benefits for users.

At a meeting several months ago, I identified 43 Smart Hal issues which I felt needed addressing. While this sounds a lot, once you start to break this down into which issues are going to be quick and easy to fix, which issues can be resolved by making superficial changes and which issues can be assigned a lower priority and may not be completely eliminated for the first release, lists like this become a bit more manageable. A good example of an issue which is not at the top of the priority list is the announcement of the Smartphone soft keys when making a voice recording.

All the Smartphones we have tested come with a voice notes application which can be used to make brief sound recordings. This is a very basic application but probably not the first reason one would buy a mobile phone. During the beta testing process we have identified a small issue where if one uses the LEFT SOFTKEY to start a voice recording, Smart Hal will announce the soft key assignments. Thus a small amount of the synthesizers speech could end up in the recording. Not a show stopper by any means, especially as there are a number of work arounds for this:

• Start the recording by selecting Record from the RIGHTSOFT menu often works on many phones.
• Use DOLPHINKEY, 2, 0 to turn the voice off before you start to record and the same command to turn the voice back on when the recording is complete.
• Make voice recordings with a headset plugged in.

Set this against an issue like reliably reading whether a number in the call history was dialed, missed or received then clearly the call history features of the phones are probably slightly more important. Well at least I think so. :)

There is a scurrilous rumor doing the rounds that if yours truly has been doing his bit to support local business by sampling the offerings in the public houses of Worcester of an evening, allegedly I am much less verbose in Smart Hal meetings the following morning? I would like to publicly disassociate myself with this allegation, and state for the record that I am taking early nights to catch up on beauty sleep in order to save myself from the ravages of aging.

Date of post: Mon, 19 Mar 2007. 11:17:23 GMT

Why does Dolphin not make mobile phones?

Someone asked me yesterday, when Dolphin were thinking about creating a mobile phone screen reader, why didn't Dolphin instead build a bespoke mobile phone for the blind from scratch?

Dolphin are a software company who's mission is to create solutions to make mainstream technology accessible for people who are partially sighted, blind or dyslexic. Building a specialist phone handset for people who are blind would be very expensive, only available from a limited range of suppliers and could only be supported and repaired by the specialist phone manufacturer.

Smart Hal is intended to be used on mainstream phones which are available at competitive prices from a wide choice of suppliers. Smartphones come in a range of shapes and sizes offering a wide variety of features, this means that Smart Hal users will enjoy the choice and flexibility of being able to select a phone which is best for them, rather than being forced to use a specific model of handset.

Date of post: Thu, 15 Mar 2007. 09:36:25 GMT

Testing testing 1 2 3

Dolphin have a small but dedicated team of active Smart Hal beta testers who represent a range of abilities and backgrounds. We have one beta tester who is working at a high level within a government department, and another beta tester who is an undergraduate student at university.

The purpose of beta testing is to make sure that the software works as expected in the real world, and can be used by ordinary people who are not software engineers. Our beta testers spend lots of time using the Smart Hal software, and in the event that they encounter something which does not work entirely as expected, the tester needs to write a clear and concise report in order that we in-house at Dolphin can attempt to reproduce the issue, identify a likely cause and if a problem is found we can pass this along to our developers. Our engineers are more likely to be able to fix problems which have been carefully and accurately described and replicated through testing.

It is always a challenge collecting and collating feedback from beta testers as sometimes it is not possible to address all issues immediately. However, the quality of feedback from our testers during the Smart Hal beta testing process has been tremendous. Thank you everyone. You know who you are!

Date of post: Wed, 14 Mar 2007. 16:24:19 GMT

First Contact with Smart Hal

In my previous post I talked about what kind of mobile phone was needed to run a mobile phone screen reader, in particular Dolphin's Smart Hal. Last summer I was lured into the depths of Dolphin Oceanic (the development arm of the Dolphin group), to take a look at a very early prototype of Smart Hal running on a Windows Mobile Smartphone. Before I tried one, I was concerned that Windows Mobile Smartphones were going to present a major learning curve for blind people and would be impractical for someone who just wanted a talking mobile phone. I could not have been more wrong!

It was a bright sunny afternoon last summer when I was invited into the hushed and hallowed halls of Dolphin's research and development company, Dolphin Oceanic, to get a first glimpse of some embryonic mobile phone software which would eventually become Smart Hal. Back then Smart Hal did not even have a name, much less any hotkeys. This really was a proof of concept more than anything else. In the beginning Smart Hal spoke with the Orpheus Synthetic Dave voice and there was no way to do any of the things one takes for granted on a talking mobile phone such as read the battery or signal strength, tell the time, configure speech settings etc. Basically, all that was possible back then was Hal could read the mobile phone focus. This means if one opened a menu or arrowed through a list of items the software would speak aloud what was on screen. Oh, and the other piece of advice which came with this early prototype was not to switch off the phone as it may not start talking when it was switched back on! I am glad to say this is nothing like the Smart Hal we know today which does all of the above, uses a choice of speech synthesizers including Eloquence and yes, starts automatically every time the phone is switched on.

The first thing which struck me upon handling a Smartphone running that early alpha version of Smart Hal was my instant familiarity with the Smartphone which just felt like a regular mobile phone. I guess I was expecting something more like a personal digital assistant (PDA). But most Smartphones have a standard 3 by 4 candy bar style telephone keypad featuring the numbers 0 to 9 as well as the standard STAR and HASH keys. Like other mobile phones I had used in the past, the Windows Mobile Smartphone had a few other keys in addition to the number keys. A CALL button for answering and initiating calls, an END button for hanging up, a 5-way joystick/navigation key for moving around in menus or messages, left and right context sensitive soft keys whose assignment would depend on which mobile phone feature you were using at any given time. So all very standard recognizable stuff. To all intents and purposes this was a mobile phone which could talk reliably and felt very responsive.

Our task over the next few months was to make Smart Hal easy to use. As well as the phone feeling familiar, we wanted the mobile phone screen reading software to also feel and sound instantly familiar so that people who are blind could just get on and use the phone rather than worrying about complicated software.

Stay tuned as we explore this process in future posts.

Date of post: Mon, 12 Mar 2007. 11:05:48 GMT

How Smart is your phone?

Today the countdown begins to the launch of Smart Hal Dolphin's smart screen reader for mobile phones. As Dolphin's Technical Support and Product Design departments, in partnership with our dedicated team of beta testers, move into the final testing of Smart Hal, you will be able to follow the smart Hal story through this official Smart Hal blog! I will talk about some of the challenges we have faced during the development and testing of Smart Hal, providing you with a unique behind the scenes glimpse into the goings on at one of the world's leading developers of software for people who are blind.

The first question which will be on most people's minds when hearing about Smart Hal for the first time is:
"Can Smart Hal make all mobile phones accessible for people who are blind?"

Heh, when I ask our developers questions like this they just roll their eyes in horror! Basically, all mobile phones are not created equal. Some mobile phones are cleverer than others. No one can realistically create a screen reader which can run on absolutely any mobile phone. This is because phones are essentially small computers which run their own operating system platforms. And, like computers, not all phones have the same architecture and thus cannot run the same operating systems. Additionally, some phones run operating systems which are closed to third-party developers, meaning that even if Dolphin, or anyone else, were able to get in there and make them talk, the software itself would probably have to be extremely limited as those closed phones are not designed to make any information available to third-party software. Moreover many closed phones have little in the way of memory and processing power.

The two most popular types of phones running operating systems which are open to third-party software developers such as Dolphin are Windows Smartphones and Simbian based phones. Before Dolphin started work on Smart Hal we had to choose which of these mobile phone platforms Smart Hal should be written for. Simbian or Windows Smartphone? Well, Dolphin already have over a decade's experience successfully creating screen readers and screen magnifiers for Windows on desktop and laptop computers. Simbian phones tend to be mostly available from one manufacturer and are already quite well served with a choice of screen reader. Windows Smartphones seem to be the phones of the future, coming in all kinds of shapes and sizes and offering a range of features from a range of manufacturers. As strong believers in choice, it was a no-brainer for Dolphin as to which way to go!

So, to run Smart Hal you will need a mobile phone which is running the Windows Smartphone platform. These phones often have the look and feel of regular mobile phones and are widely available from a range of suppliers. More information about Windows Mobile Smartphones can be found on the Dolphin website.

Next time on the Smart Hal story I will share the exciting moment last summer when I first got my hands on a Smartphone running a very early prototype of Smart Hal!

Date of post: Fri, 9 Mar 2007. 10:49:50 GMT