Vodafone Greece supports for the fourth consecutive year, the information and communications portal for the visually impaired, www.blind.gr, which is a real innovation in relation to Greek standards. Blind.gr, now, extends its services by offering the first "Tele-reader" of websites information, via the installation of the phone navigation platform RSS WebRhetor Feed by e-rhetor. This initiative is part of Vodafone Greece multi-faceted Corporate Responsibility program, and specifically is part of company’s efforts to ensure equal access to communications for all. Blind.gr has been developed by the Hellenic Technology for the Blind Development Association (STAT).

This new service is intended to optimise use of the hub’s voice portal which can be accessed by dialling +30 210 522 6600 and allows people with disabilities to directly access information from numerous sources. This tool reads the full text content of info-portals, newspapers, blogs and other websites in real time.

Websites that provide RSS feeds (or decide in the future to provide it) can join this service free of charge simply by contacting STAT, thereby enriching their website with a tool that offers alternative and total access to all.

The right to use the new service have citizens with certified visual and mobility-related disabilities. For the time being, application forms are available from the National Federation for the Blind and from STAT.

Another service offered by www.blind.gr is voice recognition, making it easier to navigate the hub’s voice portal. This service can be used by people with severe mobility-related disabilities, since all that is needed to obtain information is the user's voice. Furthermore, the hub continues to provide snippets from articles published in the daily press, notices from associations and bodies for the blind, as well as news about technological developments.

Yet another service offered by the hub is blind o.c.r. (optical character recognition) which allows registered blind.gr users to convert images and pdf files into accessible, readable text. Using this service, people with visual disabilities now have access to online texts which up until now were inaccessible via specialised computer access software (screen and text readers).

Similar to the last three year, all the services offered by www.blind.gr will be presented at the "Autonomy Expo", which will be held from 28 to 30 May at the Peristeri Municipality Exhibition Centre.

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The voice portal, ocr and RSS voice reader services have been developed and supported by e-rhetor.