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HumanWare, the byproduct of a merger between Canada's VisuAide and New Zealand's Pulse Data last year, has updated its off-the-shelf PDA for the blind, Maestro, to version 2.0. Based on a Pocket PC—a Dell X51 or HP iPAQ 4150—with a tactile overlay to allow the visually-impaired to implement commands and enter data by touch, the user receives feedback through a synthesized text-to-speech voice. The upgrade is purely to the software layer of the device.

Improvements to Maestro include the addition of a Wi-Fi e-mail manager, a media player for music and audio books, and a task manager, according to HumanWare. So users can now read, forward, reply, transfer and create e-mail messages (and attach files) through ActiveSync or over a Wi-Fi; read MP3 and WMA books; and create and manage tasks, and synchronize them with Outlook on a PC.

Maestro users enter text with Braille (in computer Braille) or text their data with an optional KeyMaestro Braille Bluetooth keyboard, or a standard QWERTY keyboard for longer documents. It also includes a Today’s page, improvements in applications—like variable speed reading, choice of views in the Calendar, better support of scanned documents, a formatting tool for the memory cards, and support for a second language.

A free update should be available for current Maestro users as a download this August. The Maestro 2.0 PDA sells new for $1,295.