Motorola + National Federation of the Blind to make cell phonesaccessible to the Blind

The National Federation of the Blind and Motorola has announced that they have entered into a cooperation agreement to promote technologies that improve the accessibility of cell phones to blind consumers.

Certain future Motorola cell phones will provide verbal readouts of information such as the time and date, battery level, signal strength, user’s phone number, caller ID information for incoming calls, missed and received calls, and voice mail alerts. Blind users will also be able to take advantage of verbal readouts and voice-command features for ring tone status, inputting and accessing contacts, and various other settings. Motorola expects these cell phones to be available in 2010. The parties have also agreed to work together to make additional phones and features accessible to blind users.