free phone calls into our telecon.

I've been trying a service that gives free internet phone calls into the 
U.S., www.dialpad.com.

Setting it up was very smooth for me.  There was nothing to download (it 
works off a java applet which doesn't really count as a download).

The sound quality takes some getting used to.  Voices break up and at first 
it sounds like you're losing some of the words or parts of words.  But 
after a while you realize that at least for the most part it's inserting 
very short breaks (maybe a 100 msec or so) in between and inside words, so 
you have kind of piece them together.  After about 5 or 10 minutes it's 
like learning to understand someone with an accent you're not used to.  I 
had usuable, though not great, conversations.

Unfortunately, the Java applet doesn't seem to be accessible.  For example, 
there doesn't seem to be a way to get into the number entry field without a 
mouse.

Still, If you'd like to join one of our telecons, you may want to give it try.

There's another couple of companies I haven't tried, www.phonefree.com
and
www.go2call.com

searching on "free phone" in the open directory (accessible e.g. from 
Goggle) lists a bunch more.

Len
--
Leonard R. Kasday, Ph.D.
Institute on Disabilities/UAP and Dept. of Electrical Engineering at Temple 
University
(215) 204-2247 (voice)                 (800) 750-7428 (TTY)
http://astro.temple.edu/~kasday         mailto:kasday@acm.org

Chair, W3C Web Accessibility Initiative Evaluation and Repair Tools Group
http://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/IG/

The WAVE web page accessibility evaluation assistant: 
http://www.temple.edu/inst_disabilities/piat/wave/