Cisco honored with FCC award for designing accessibility features for the blind on its 8800 Series Phones

New software update enables a “text to speech” functionality.

A telephone is really a critical device for just about any business. Yes, you utilize it to reply to and put calls, however the display is indispensable for caller identification, call history, directory assistance, along with other tasks like call forwarding. For individuals who're visually impaired however, with such features is almost impossible and may keep huge numbers of people in a major disadvantage at work.

This is where a group from Cisco’s collaboration business unit arrived by having an innovative method to help solve this problem for numerous visually impaired people.

Dealing with the American Council for that Blind, the engineering team designed and released an application update towards the Cisco 8800 series phone, and produced a “text to speech” functionality. This selection gives individuals with vision-related disabilities audible options, allowing them exactly the same workplace abilities his or her co-workers.

“Advancements such as this assistance to remove barriers for employment for that vision-impaired,” stated Jim Brasher, a Cisco engineering product manager.  “We expect to building about this later on once we make an effort to supply the vision-impaired community exactly the same workplace abilities as men and women without disabilities.”

For that team’s efforts, the FCC awarded them the 2019 Chairman’s Awards for Advancement in Ease of access. These awards celebrate and recognition private and public ventures to talk about guidelines and solutions around accessible communication technologies.

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai was on hands to provide the award to Cisco and stated the award is all about “Celebrating innovators who make it easy for Americans with disabilities to make use of their gifts. Enabling individuals with disabilities to make use of today’s technologies might help them realize their full potential.”

“This award is really a tremendous recognition from the work our teams did to boost the usability of phones for that vision-impaired,” Brasher stated.

Cisco ships almost 3 million new 8800 Series phones each year, and the other 8 million are in the market. The program release can be obtained for new phones and individuals already operating.

Cisco and Global Citizen Announce Collaboration to Help End Extreme Poverty by 2030

Today, worldwide advocacy organization Global Citizen and Cisco announced a brand new, three-year partnership to power the movement to finish extreme poverty.  The organization will commit funding and technology to assist finish poverty, playing an important role for making progress for the Un Global Goals for Sustainable Development and ending extreme poverty by 2030.

Cisco’s technology partnership with Global Citizen belongs to their dedication to dealing with customers, partners, and government and community leaders, to deal with key social and economic challenges. While using network, cyber security, and collaboration technology, Cisco and it is partners are building solutions for global being homeless, supplying greater use of mental and physical healthcare, educating and developing workforces, and creating financial inclusion.

With Global Citizen, Cisco will supply the Wi-Fi technology, content, and storytelling platforms at its various festivals along with other thought leadership forums and occasions. Additionally, Cisco will give you the collaboration technology solutions accustomed to fuel Global Citizen’s business, including connecting Global Citizen with key contributors, partners, ambassadors, and festival curators. This latest partnership may also give a platform for Cisco employees to interact using the charitable causes they're enthusiastic about.

“The power technologies have compare unique car features and solve legitimate social problems like poverty is core to the identity at Cisco.  We're excited they are driving significant social impact with Global Citizen using the growth of our partnership,” stated Francine Katsoudas, Executive V . P . & Chief People Officer of Cisco.

“Global Citizen and Cisco share an interest in using innovation and technology to amplify just one voice to effect change for a lot of. We use technology every single day to upon world leaders and also the private sector to create commitments that may unlock vast amounts of dollars for that battle to eradicate extreme poverty,” stated Hugh Evans, Chief executive officer and Co-Founding father of Global Citizen. “2020 marks a vital moment within the fight for any sustainable future, with only 10 years to choose us to offer the United nations Sustainable Development Goals. Through this multi-year partnership with Cisco, we're excited to equip advocates and activists all over the world using the twenty-first century tools and skills they will have to create a significant improvement in the lives from the world’s most marginalized people.”

Today’s announcement marks extra time of Cisco’s ongoing partnership with Global Citizen.  Cisco continuously support Global Citizen’s Youth Leadership Prize that honors youthful individuals aged 18-30 who've made significant contributions towards ending poverty.  This past year, with an investment prize of $250,000 from Cisco, Wawira Njiru, the Founder and Executive Director of Food 4 Education, a company dealing with vulnerable children in Kenyan public schools to supply subsidized school lunches, could create “Tap2Eat” a wristband that tracks students’ lunch money so that they do not have to hold cash or supplying free meals for families who can't afford the subsidized costs. After piloting the wristbands with 300 students across three schools, they'll soon scale as much as 20 schools to achieve 10,000 students.

Cisco makes impactful technological commitments towards ending extreme poverty.  At 2018’s Global Citizen Festival Mandela 100 in Gauteng, Cisco announced that it is Networking Academy helps to produce possibilities for individuals all over the world through training that can help train people with important twenty-first century skills. Cisco dedicated to preparing ten million students worldwide to operate and thrive within the digital economy within the next 5 years. Presently, greater than 9 million students in 180 countries have took part in Cisco Networking Academy with the aim of doubling this within the next 5 years with this particular new commitment.