I can personally recommend [url=http://www.talknav.com[/url]TalkNav[/url], they sell Talks and Wayfinder access. I tried a demo of Wayfinder Access after buying a GPS receiver from them for this purpose and came to the conclusion it is a little impractical for on foot, since I would have to walk along with my phone in my hand near my head. That's the big advantage of the trekker, the shoulder strap and the speaker on it. TalkNav were great for Talks though, they emailed the code to me fairly promptly.

As for the phones Talks homepage has a list of supported devices and a demo available for download. The "Vocaliser" voices are nice too, I use Emily. It's basically a low footprint version of RealSpeak.

Hmmm, I'm not even sure what a braille sense is, and while I've considdered a Pda, I don't much like the price, ---- especially compared to the wayfinder option which as I said I believe costs about six hundred quid all in for the phone, software and hardware.

thanks a lot for all the linkage Cx2, ----- just what i wanted to know.

As reguards the braille note stuff, one question? I don't know a lot about the braille note, but i thought it was a pda with a keyboard and braille display. If so, how do you read it in the middle of the street to get your directions? Is it small enough to just pull out and read? does it have speech and so potentially use of headphones or similar?

appologies if I've got this wrong.

Wayfinder doesn't work off road? I was also hoping to go walking with it, and anyway there are lots of small lanes and litle alleys in Durham where you can walk, but not get a car, how does it handle those?

Apparently Trekker has a "free mode" which it switches to when you're outside of an area with street information.

As to Wayfinder, I'll warn you it also requires a mobile internet connection. It might use about 10 or 20p for a substantial trip, I'm not sure. This is based on Orange pay as you go, if you use other providers or have a data package it might vary.

As to the Braillenote, it isn't quite a PDA with a keyboard and Braille display. It uses a proprietary system built on top of the PDA system so you can't run normal PDA software. The Pac Mate however is cheaper for all levels and accesses the Windows Mobile system directly, instead of using it to save on programming work. All of them as far as I know have speech output and also come in speech only versions along with choice of qwerty or Braille keyboard, but headphones probably aren't recommended when outside on foot because they could muffle or distort traffic sounds.

I hope that there will one day be a gps for the braille plus  that would be extremely convenient

I've an E65 too. It might work fine for in taxis, but would be fairly useless on foot given the requirement for a third arm and hand. You just can't walk along with your phone to your ear and a cane in the other hand, it simply doesn't work.

I know when I went to sight village a few years ago Humanware, or was it Visuaide then, certainly were demonstrating the Trekker. You might be able to find someone demonstrating the Wayfinder, but if Computer Room Services are there they should be at least be able to discuss Talks which they're also a reseller of.

Myself I was impressed by the ultracane at sight village, but upon buying one was horribly disappointed. I found it just distracted too much, while using it I didn't get that much extra info from the ultrasonics and was too busy concentrating on that that I didn't noticed I had crossed a road... twice. Luckily they were more small lanes, but still it was enough that I didn't use it again. It also distracted my normally pretty good ability to dodge people purely from their sound.