Dolphin Hal for Windows Mobile Screen Reader
Published: Jun 19, 2007The first screen reader for the PDA was presented at the United Kingdom TechShare 2004 conference and will be available in summer 2005. Dolphin creates a mobile office for visually impaired with the development of Hal for Pocket PC.
Dolphin’s latest Hal screen reader for Windows Mobile PDAs, will give people who have a visual impairment a mobile handheld office and entertainment center. It will provide access to everyday Windows based desktop data and software applications via a Windows Mobile based PDA, including Pocket Word, Pocket Excel, Pocket Outlook and Pocket Internet Explorer.
In the final stages of development, Dolphin’s latest screen reader, based on the Microsoft Windows Mobile 2003 platform, offers users an alternative to the traditional handheld Braille devices.
My Colleague Mike Hill (Dolphin’s Software Director) and I presented a paper to the RNIB Techshare conference regarding a version of Hal for Pocket PC. I thought some people might be interested in a quick summary of the 40 minute presentation. Mike and his team have been working on this platform for about 18 months and the time has now come to announce that the development is scheduled to finish in Quarter 2 of 2005. It looks like all the major problems have been overcome, which when considering the magnitude of this problems, I must say is a tribute to all at Dolphin’s development team. If I may I will summarize the presentation Mike and I made at Techshare in two categories - negative and positive.
Steve Bennett from Dolphin Computer Access told Techshare visitors that “It is possible to use the Optelec highly portable Braille input pad called Easylink to input in Braille.” He explained that the features of Hal for the PDAs are the same as the full versions “We have ported the latest version and the development streams for PC and PDA are on an identical version. It is the full product not a cut down version. It is possible to use the training facility in the professional version to map an application.”
Dolphin pricing is still to be determined and will be announced prior to launch.
Source: Dolphin Computer Access
