May 7th, 2006
New Cell Phone Adjusts Experience for the Elderly
By Michael Santo
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews
Now here’s a clever idea, especially as the Baby Boomer generation starts reaching older age. Motorola has patented technology that automatically, based on vocal patterns, adjusts the audio for older people. Additionally, it changes the menu structure and increases the font size.
First the phone determines that the user is elderly by detecting speech acoustics based upon lower speech rate, and less energy and trembling within the speech utterances. Once recognized, the cell phone adjusts incoming audio by boosting the high frequency bands through audio processors while simultaneously increasing the power of the outgoing signal to improve intelligibility. Additionally, the graphical user interface is automatically changed to adjust based on visual characteristics of elderly users. Source: Mobiledia
We Say: I do need reading glasses now so the larger font might be helpful to me. 
Seriously, this is a great idea, assuming it works and works well.
Alice says:
I actually got rid of my Motorola phone because I could not hear anything even with the volume all the way up. I actually thought I was going deaf. Switched to a Samsung and have never had to crank the volume all the way up except once when I was walking by a construction site. Hopefully Motorola will fix the basic volume issue ( I tried someone’s RAZR and found that pretty low volume too) for everyone.
But this is a great idea.
May 7th, 2006 at 8:48 am
donalds says:
Actually, there are a lot of “non-elderly” people who suffer from hearing loss. These folks would not have the, “lower speech rate, less energy and trembling within the speech” for the phone to detect, so the phone would not crank up the volume for them - right? Maybe I just don’t understand what the phone does.
DonaldS
May 7th, 2006 at 1:26 pm
grant says:
government business grants…
Nicely layed out webpage — keep up the good work
college grants…
October 20th, 2006 at 12:29 am