IBM teams up with universities to make elderly friendly cell phones

IBM is working with the National Institute of Design of India and the Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology at the University of Tokyo as part of a two-year Open Collaborative Research program that will help make cell phones easier to use for the elderly and illiterate.

"Through this collaborative research initiative, we will uncover real information accessibility requirements and issues that the elderly and people in developing economies are facing today," IBM's Fellow and chief technology officer of IBM's accessibility research, Chieko Asakawa, said.

IBM Research will release software solutions as open source material. It hopes that other businesses and governments will take advantage of the open source software to create mobile phones and applications that can be used by the illiterate, blind, deaf, or elderly.

IBM believes that a low cost of ownership and intuitive user interfaces will help attract the illiterate in emerging countries, as well as the elderly that don't believe they need cell phones, or think they're too complicated to use.