Most consumer electronics manufacturers have nothing to offer people with impaired vision. Not so Marc Mulcahy, the co-founder of Levelstar and its product designer. Mulcahy has been blind since birth so he knows exactly what his customers need. There are 10 million blind or visually impaired people out there and another 5.5 million with age-related sight loss, so that knowledge could turn into a tidy little sum.
Levelstar's Linux based Icon is a screenless PDA, navigated by sound. The buttons are laid out just like a cellphone, making them easy to get used to. It has everything you'd expect, including calendar, book reader, web browser, email manager, music player, RSS reader. It even supports podcasts and comes with a 30 gig hard drive.
The specs aren't too shabby either, although everything is based on last year's standards. WiFi is 802.11b, Bluetooth is 1.1and the USB is 1.1. An Intel 520MHz XScale, Mini SD, and a pair of speakers make up the rest. The Icon will dock with either a QWERTY or a Braille keyboard for easier browsing at home.
They seem to have looked to Apple on pricing though. $1400 dollars gets you the basic unit, the extended warrantee is $125.00 for a year and software updates will cost you $75.00. Expensive, but then compare this to the $20,000 you can pay for top of the line hearing aids and it starts to look cheaper.
Product page [Levelstar]
