I know that the IPhone 3gs and IPone4 come with the speech bilt in. The speech thing is quite useble, but if you are looking for a phone with buttons, you might want to keep on looking because the IPhone does not have buttons for the most part. Anyway, here is some info on the IPhone. I hope it helps, and you can find a few games to play on the IPhone if that is what you want to do.

I'd recommend the iPhone over others, and not just cause I have one either! Having a music player that tells you everything is quite a feature to have, not to mention a full web browser that works really good for the most part. In fact, I'm using the phone to write this. There are indeed many other phones that can be made to talk, but too often at quite a price; another factor in why I have what I do now.

No download necessary, it is part of the OS. Under settings, general, accessibility it can be enabled. In the same menu there should also be an option to enter a practice area to practice gestures, like a keyboard help or key describer mode in screen readers or other assistive devices.

Any iPhone 3GS or iPhone 4 has this option in its settings as a default, it cannot be removed only enabled or disabled. There is also there is an option to have a triple press of the "home" button, a round button below the screen, turn voice over on or off which is handy for apps which voice over gestures block such as games and the like.

iPhone 3GS physical description:
There is a large portrait screen on the front, not hugely wide but fairly high. Above it is a slot which is the normal speaker for during calls and below it is the circular "home" button. On the bottom edge is the dock connector, used either for linking to a dock or to a USB cable for charging and/or syncing. On the top right edge is the lock or unlock button, top left is the headset connector which also accepts a normal 3.5mm headphone connection. Around the corner on the left edge at the top is the sliding switch for ringing or silent, down from that is the up/down volume switch. To change speech volume you need to use the volume control while the phone is speaking, takes a bit of practice but not hard once you get the hang of it.

Other models may vary of course. If Hal works with iTunes then so much the better, the phone will definitely need activation via iTunes if nothing else. Apps can be installed either through iTunes or from the "App store" app on the phone itself, including iBooks which is worth a look if you get one. I wouldn't suggest getting the phone just for iBooks but it is a nice addition, they certainly have a lot of Tolkien's stuff.

Hi dark,
you know, the iPhone has wi-fi. And, it's smaller then your usual laptop and it does have some nice games and such.
If you need someone to show it, it has to be, at least, an iPhone 3gs. an iPhone 3g will not work.
If you get yours, if you hook it up to iTunes, there is a nice way to enabled voice over with in there. you find your sources tree, which is the first thing you land on, hit d for devices. then find the universal access button.
In there, you have, neither (no access), voice over, or zoom. I know you're Vi, so you could juse use zoom, however I heard, from Vi people that they prefer using voice over over zoom. it's just easier or something like that.
and, you can't have both at once, as the gestures would be interfeering.
As far as non touch phones, there are nokia phones and windows mobile. In fact, there is a wm verrsion of hal, but it will cost you much more than getting an iPhone, and also, ms is unwilling to make windows phone 7 accessible. shows how commited they are.
On nokia symbiain devices, there is talks, but, again, extra price tag.

A network of wifi access points run by British Telecom, thus BT. Hotspot is a wi fi access point that is either open for public use, or open for public use with a fee.

Dark, activation is done on the PC or Mac via USB. First time you connect the phone to a computer running a suitable version of iTunes it opens the registration section. It works a lot like registering a program or device in other circumstances, you just need an iTunes account. The iPhone must indeed be at least a 3GS to get speech, and like I said it is all built in so it is easily turned on temporarily so you can have an experiment. As mentioned above the iPhone does indeed have wi fi for net access when you're at home, internet access is only required on the computer running full iTunes for the activation. Just make sure you put the sim card in first, I had that problem. You can even get apps without internet on the phone at all by downloading them through iTunes on the computer and then syncing the phone via USB.

USB cable is included as well as a USB to mains adapter, the USB cable also charges the phone. I gather the Navigon GPS app works well with voice over as well, which is handy if you find another taxi driver unable to locate his orifice with a pair of dextrous manipulators and a topographical illustration while you left your GPS at home.

Well if your laptop can connect to a hotspot then an iPhone will be able to as well. It supports 802.11 wifi just as normal. If you're never far from a hotspot then mobile internet is pretty pointless.

That said Fon is a slightly different beast to permanant hot spots, the Fon thing is a home router that shares a little bit of its bandwidth. It isn't the same as, for example, a hotspot in a public building or a cafe. Of course to a user the difference isn't huge but it is worth bearing in mind.

Ah, i didn't know phun was technically different to any standard hotspot provided somewhere, but as you said to the user it doesn't seem there is a major difference at all.

Weerdly, one of the fastest and most reliable wireless access servies I've ever seen is that in st pancrus station, ---- for some reason it was ridiculously fast (I could even stream, which for a wireless hotspot is fairly amazing).

My only issue with getting a phone with speech software sabrina like the nockier you mentioned is that I physically don't want to actually pay for a mobile screen reader. o2 will provide me with a phone like the Iphone 4 which comes with built in speech free on my contract, but I suspect to actually get talks or another mobile phone speech program I'd have to buy it myself. Sinse I already have a perfectly workable laptop that I frequently wander around with, which has wireless net access, music playing etc, I just don't see the need to shell out the cash to be honest.

I'm pretty sure networks used to offer phones with Talks pre installed as part of contracts, don't know if that is still the case. You might be able to get a phone with the speech software included if that is your preferred route. As someone who moved to an iPhone from a Nokia E65 I can say that the iPhone definitely has a lot more options in terms of music playing and general multimedia, plus using the internet is easier in the iPhone for me. That might be though because I could never remember the keys for the Symbion browser with Talks but I can remember the gestures with Voice Over.

The best way I can think of for trying is to borrow one for a while. I hope the following podcast from blindcooltech helps.

• iPhone Basics

• iPod Touch

• iPod Touch 2

• iPod Touch Apps

• iPod Touch 3

• iTunes With A Screen Reader

• Arrange Home Screen

• Some iPhone Games

those last three links are mainly for after you get an IPhone, but they may also be of help when trying to make up your mind. I also know that there is some stuff about the IPhone on lioncourt if that helps.
hth

edit
Forgot to say that the VIPhone group is a good resource that might be werth checking out.

That's actually a pretty good plan if I can't find someone with one, I'm sure there will be an aple shop in either nottingham or newcastle somewhere.

Thanks for the podcast links Cw. i'm not sure on the "itunes with a screen reader one" sinse usually those tend to be jaws centric, but I deffinately appreciate all the links to the Iphone related stuff including games.

There is a link at the bottom of the page which lists all the bb codejust have a look there.

I might check the itunes pod cast, but occasionally if it does stay out of jaws script specific stuff the way I've heard a lot of screen reader stuff do. For instance, look at all the games which tell you to completely unload, or put to sleep your screen reader before playing.

In Hal, ---- and I believe window eyes, you can leave the program running and just flick off the voice or hot keys with no change (frequently I pause a game, alt tab out of it and do something else, then go back to it), yet, the manuals to many games don't make any distinction, merely state "your screen reader" even though this is a jaws specific requirement.

• testing

• this

Anyway, yeah, this also doesn't apply to window-eyes, or even nvda. actualy it applies only to jaws, any other sr I know doesn't have this issue, apart from some sluggishness with the ctrl key in system access, which is annoying, say, when playing pipe, but that's about it.