[gui-talk] A glitch in the righteous posture?(wasReadingRightsCoalition Denounces Random House)

Sat May 23 04:11:46 UTC 2009

Actually Amazon has a publishing division that makes PDF books and they
offer these books to be published on Kindle as one of the benefits.

The process of making an e-book is a bit complicated, even for a DAISY book
and so this is not a free thing for the publisher to do, it is not placed in
that format as you make the book,  you have to purposely re-edit the entire
book to put it into an accessible format.  This is because print publishing
and electronic format are two different things.

Oh sure we can make simple documents that work in both formats but once you
start typesetting books, the rules get thrown out and you are designing for
print publications.  You can make the book into an electronic version
afterwards but it still requires  a lot of further formatting and that is a
skill that is not only very tedious, most people do not know how to do it,
even if they have been in IT for years.

James Pepper

On Fri, May 22, 2009 at 12:20 PM, Joel Deutsch <jdeutsch at dslextreme.com>wrote:

> Andy,
>
> Well, that's how I feel about bothering with the Kindle, myself. Not rich
> and have plenty of reading material. The only thing that does make me even
> a
> little resentful is the fact that, the way Amazon's doing this, they're
> offering more and more newly published titles as Kindle-ready for those who
> want to buy and download them that way instead of as print books, and
> usually that means that if the Kindle were accessible to me (I mean using
> it, not seeing the fonts better or something, which means little to me) I'd
> have something other than the small mix of titles that eventually come out
> on audible for sale, and then months or years later from NlS., if at all.
>
> But no, I'm not spending my idle evenings pining for a Kindle, with nothing
> to listen to. Now, if it were less than half the retail price and fully
> accessible, I might go for it, assuming Amazon hadn't caved to pressure
> about the text to speech and stopped offering it for many books I'd like to
> have gotten in that from .
>
> Oh, well.
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Baracco, Andrew W" <Andrew.Baracco at va.gov>
> To: "NFBnet GUI Talk Mailing List" <gui-talk at nfbnet.org>
>  Sent: Friday, May 22, 2009 9:55 AM
> Subject: Re: [gui-talk] A glitch in the righteous
> posture?(wasReadingRightsCoalition Denounces Random House)
>
>
> Since the introduction of the kindle II, they came out with a large
> screen model, designed for reading newspapers and textbooks.  They are
> charging $500 for this unit.  I would imagine that if they had to
> redesign the interface to be accessed by persons with no vision or low
> vision, that the price would be prohibitive. Remember that the people
> who would purchase this enhanced device have a 70% unemployment rate.
> Personally, I can already access more books through the currently
> available sources to give me several lifetimes worth of reading
> material.
>
> Andy
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: gui-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:gui-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org]
> On Behalf Of Joel Deutsch
> Sent: Thursday, May 21, 2009 3:31 PM
> To: NFBnet GUI Talk Mailing List
> Subject: Re: [gui-talk] A glitch in the righteous posture?
> (wasReadingRightsCoalition Denounces Random House)
>
> Don,
>
> Okay, understood. But my question is why is Amazon being taken to task
> only about the copyright issue and not about the inaccessibility of its
> controls?
> I understand that the speech function seems to have been conceived
> mostly as a nice novelty and convenience, not as an aid to the blind.
> But so what.
> They really should have thought of the blind angle and designed the unit
> so that a blind person could operate it. But it doesn't seem the NFB or
> anyone else is making anything of that, just objecting to their waffling
> over the copyright issue and whether or not books sold for Kindle will
> have a speech option. I just find it odd that this is the sole focus,
> not also the controls issue. I just wonderred if anyone was privy to the
> NFB's long-term strategy about trying to influence the direction of the
> Kindle's development.
>
> Hope that's more clear.
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Don Moore" <don.moore48 at comcast.net>
> To: "NFBnet GUI Talk Mailing List" <gui-talk at nfbnet.org>
> Sent: Thursday, May 21, 2009 12:29 PM
> Subject: Re: [gui-talk] A glitch in the righteous posture? (was
> ReadingRightsCoalition Denounces Random House)
>
>
> Not sure of all the legal ramifications, but as an internet ready device
> you'd think it would fall under the FCC regs for accessibility, and
> should have to meet such.  Since Amazon is trying to get it into the
> education market there are regulations for accessibility there too.
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Joel Deutsch" <jdeutsch at dslextreme.com>
> To: "NFBnet GUI Talk Mailing List" <gui-talk at nfbnet.org>
> Sent: Thursday, May 21, 2009 12:00 PM
> Subject: [gui-talk] A glitch in the righteous posture? (was Reading
> RightsCoalition Denounces Random House)
>
>
> I have seen a lot of discussion on this issue about the Amazon Kindle
> and
> the juggling of copyright law in regard to speech output. I don't wish
> to
> address the legal issues, either from the copyright side or the ADA
> side.
> But what I do wonder, repeatedly, is what all this can matter,
> practically
> speaking, for someone like me lacking central (macular) vision or
> totally
> blind, as the controls that allow use of this device are said to be
> inaccessible, I believe because they're touch-screen controls and not
> mechanical buttons whose use can be memorized by an enterprising person
> with
> a little help from a sighted tutor, meaning a friend who will patiently
> teach the skill.
>
> For whose benefit is protest being made at this point? The partially
> sighted
> who can read visually given enough text size and contrast, but who for
> some
> reason can't locate and identify the control buttons? if so, I can say
> fine,
> no problem. But If the stated objection is without regard to the
> possible
> ironies and contradictions and, as such, is actually just a first step
> in an
> anticipated battle to inspire yet a further upgrade to the Kindle that
> will,
> this time, include blind-operable controls, that too I could understand.
> Hassle them about the copyright thing first, then, while they're busy
> fighting the NFB over that, hit them with the control inaccessibility
> thing.
> Never having been entirely serious about the copyright issue while it
> was
> still moot for practical reasons to do with nonoperability.
>
> Personally, if I were to purchase a Kindle, I'd have to do all my
> reading on
> it aided by a sighted person who could change the page display for me,
> like
> the page turner who stands beside the bench of a concert pianist as the
> pianist plays from his or her score. This isn't practical for me, as I
> have
> neither a slave or a paid assistant. So I continue to buy my commercial
> recorded books from audible. com and play the files either on my
> computer
> with the Jaws-friendly Audible Manager software or on my .mp3 player,
> which
> required two people, one blind via email and a second sighted and here
> with
> me, to teach me how to use well enough despite the unit's reliance on a
> menu
> window.
>
> I hope I've posed this seeming contradiction clearly enough.
>
> thanks.
>
>
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