Showing its commitments for the people with disabilities, Research In Motion (RIM) on Monday launched BlackBerry Screen Reader, a free software application that helps customers who are blind or visually impaired operate their BlackBerry smartphone.

BlackBerry Screen Reader provides an audible output based on visual information displayed on a BlackBerry smartphone.

“We are excited to introduce BlackBerry Screen Reader as part of our suite of accessibility solutions for BlackBerry smartphones,” said Greg Fields, Senior Product Manager. “BlackBerry Screen Reader helps customers with visual impairments stay connected with the people and information that matter most to them, and is representative of RIM’s continuing commitment to support customers with disabilities.”

With BlackBerry Screen Reader users can easily access core BlackBerry applications including email, calendar, phone calls and more. Apart from this with speech settings users can customize the text to speech settings (volume, pitch and speech rate) and preferences for punctuation, verbosity and password security.

Other features of BlackBerry Screen Reader includes keyboard shortcuts which helps users set speech and audio preferences quickly and easily through (physical) keyboard shortcuts. User Guide is available in accessible HTML through a desktop web browser.

BlackBerry Screen Reader is available now as a free download for the BlackBerry Curve 9350, 9360 and 9370 smartphones. The application is available in English, French, Italian, German and Spanish.