Dear Amazon.com,
The community of people with print disabilities were all a-twitter about the Kindle 2. Readers who use their ears to read - those who are visually impaired, have learning disabilities, are learning English, or are functionally illiterate - were excited to finally have a mass-marketed, accessible device that allows them to read. No "special" devices. Books, newspapers, and magazines would be available to them at the same way, at the same time, and AT THE SAME PRICE as they are to everyone else. What a great idea!
But then you allowed authors and publishers to block that great idea.
I work at a regional university. One of my responsibilities is to ensure that students with print disabilities have accessible textbooks. Frankly, I was really hoping that the Kindle could help. I'd love it if our students could just buy a textbook that is accessible to them. Just this morning, I had a student ask me about the Kindle 2 - whether it might work for her, and how she might be able to fund it. It hurt to have to tell her about the decision you have made to allow authors and publishers to block access to text-to-speech, but it wouldn't be responsible of me to let her assume, based on early press, that she's have that accessibility to all the great texts that you have.
Please, Amazon, reconsider.
I just got a Kindle and the "Text to Speech" option, along with playing MP3 files and surfing the web, are listed as "experimental prototypes." It also asks users "Should we continue working on them?" and invites your comments be sent to "dindle2-feedback@amazon.com"
ReplyDeleteSo, it seems that Amazon themselves aren't fully committed to the technology.
It's hard to tell what Amazon is committed to right now, with all of the hulabaloo. The Author's Guild seems to be the focus of most of the pressure from the disability community at this point. http://www.readingrights.org/
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