PhoneValet

PhoneValet revolutionizes the way your busy home or small office uses the telephone. Keep using your existing standard lines and phones and enjoy features usually found only on expensive telephone switches. It’s so affordable, easy to install and powerful that some small businesses get a Mac just to take advantage of it!

PhoneValet includes software and hardware, and has over 50 valuable features.
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1. PhoneValet identifies callers & the right person answers
2. Voice mail & Auto-attendant: A professional image 24×7
3. Build corporate memory: Call recordings and call history
4. Accurate and powerful dialing

Actually, that blurb is not a very good description of how PhoneValet can be useful for people with disabilities because their website focusses more on use by small businesses. I use PhoneValet myself and these are some of the things that I find helpful:

• It lets me dial numbers from my Address Book or any number that’s on a web page or in an email, etc., and automatically fixes up the area codes and so on for my location.
• It recognises Caller ID and looks up phone numbers in my OS X Address Book to get names, then gives me the information visually or with the text-to-speech.
• It works as an answering machine and records voicemail then emails me the messages so I don’t forget about them.
• I can set it to do different things with calls according to the caller ID, for example send certain numbers straight to voicemail without bothering me, and give different voicemail options to different callers, and so on.
• It can do different things at different times of day – I have set mine up to never audibly announce anything after 11pm, and send calls right to voicemail except for a few people that I know will only call me late in an emergency.
• When I pick up the phone, it automatically pauses iTunes so I don’t have to scramble to pause it so I can hear.
• I can ask it to record all calls to/from certain numbers, or manually get it record a call I’m currently on. I use that part to “take notes” because trying to remember or type information and listen at the same time is not something I can manage.
• It does faxes as well as voice calls.
• The call log helps me remember whether I’ve done something or not.
• On days when I’m too ill to speak on the phone, I change the voicemail recording (It’s easy to switch between recordings) so people know that I am here and listening and just can’t speak.

There are probably more things I can’t remember, it just does so many things! I have used PhoneValet for several years and their support people have been very helpful even though Australia isn’t officially on the list of countries that PhoneValet supports.

- Ricky Buchanan