OcuSource Pens Alliance with Talking Communities to Bring Free Internet Voice Conferencing to the Visually Impaired

Vision impairment industry portal OcuSource.com, LLC and Talking Communities www.audio-tips.com announced the formation of an alliance between the companies to provide a comprehensive worldwide voice-chat community for visually impaired consumers, their caregivers, and the professionals who service them.

“We are delighted to be bringing Talking Communities technology to all areas of the vision impairment industry,” states Dr. Lou Lipschultz, founder and CEO of OcuSource.com. “Our alliance with Talking Communities fulfills our goals of enhancing the global access to products and services. The alliance also facilitates several initiatives that the market has been asking for,” Lipschultz affirmed. “Our goal is to provide a place where visitors can speak with a family member anywhere in the world without additional cost, can communicate with others with similar interests locally and abroad, and can participate in online presentations or educational events. Naturally, our plan required a fully accessible solution for blind users, and Talking Communities beat the competition hands down. Their voice chat utility is fully accessible by programs called screen readers, which enable blind users to interact with their computers,” stated Lipschultz.

The community’s rooms are organized in logical categories. The visitor then clicks on the desired room and is brought to an Internet browser window with a login screen. Most rooms are open access and do not require a password to enter. After the log in, the visitor is then directed to a second window where, in addition to voice-chat capabilities, several resources can be viewed: the list of others in the room, a conventional text chat area, and a large browser window were Web pages or other documents can be shared with other viewers. Rooms can be used for discussions, training, business presentations and more, all from the comfort of the user’s computer.

“Accessibility is the core competency of our team” stated George Buys, CEO of Talking Communities. Blind from a disorder called retinitis pigmentosa, Buys founded Talking Communities and employs multiple blind programmers, customer support, and administrative staff. “Our new relationship with OcuSource allows us to leap into a new age of global communications for the vision impaired community,” stated Buys. “It was actually somewhat unsettling when I ended my first conversation with Lou. Our respective plans were exactly the same; we just needed each other’s resources to complete the circle. The combined resources found in OcuSource and Talking Communities are an ideal fit,” Buys confirmed.

The voice-chat area of OcuSource is free to users, and is found at, in the Community area of the site.

Source: OcuSource.com