[gui-talk] Ray Kurzweil Teams with Baker & Taylor on New eReader Software

[Steve Jacobson]

James,

Your message confuses me a little.  My understanding of this announcement is simply that a publisher is cooperating with KNFB reader to use a format and software 
that allows us to have access to an electronic book format that the publisher is already using or is willing to use.  I suppose that if it worked well, there would be 
some hope that it would be used by additional publishers but I don't see it as being in conflict with what you are saying in your note.  If there is a way for publisher's 
material to be made accessible without authors having to do anything special, that would be great.  However, we really have two problems.  How do we get better 
general access to materials and how do we get access to books that authors and publishers have already converted to an electronic format?  

It would be interesting to know more about what approach you are taking.  In general, creating texts that are truly accessible is not as simple as people try to make it 
sometimes, you are right about that, so I am curious how you are approaching dealing with multiple authoring packages and what kind of access you are providing?.

Thanks.

Best regards,

Steve Jacobson

On Fri, 23 Oct 2009 10:39:28 -0500, James Pepper wrote:

>The problem here is that this will still require publishers to turn all of
>their content into a new format and you will still have to edit the entire
>document again, after it is made.  This is the reason that books are not
>made accessible.

>To solve this problem you have to make content once that is accessible to
>all as it is made without the author knowing how to make content
>accessible.  They just make the content and it is done.

>Each of the E-book technologies are a different format, DAISY and the
>various PDF variations (including Kindle) require an extensive re-editing of
>the content and this sounds like it is the same situation where you have the
>original book and you have to convert it to a format to be
>accessible. Editors do not want to do the extra work and it is quite
>extensive, if you do not edit a document correctly, the content will not
>show up in the new format and those costs are extensive. Hence the
>resistance to accessibility by the publishers.

>For instance we saw Microsoft come out with its DAISY format for Microsoft
>Word which implied that all you had to do was save the document using the
>SAVE as DAISY button.  But if that document was not reformatted properly,
>when you push the button, content would be lost.  You would not notice the
>content being lost unless you actually tested the document and nobody does
>that, they just assume everything went well because usually the first few
>paragraphs will make the conversion and also most people never actually use
>screen readers or even the free daisy players, they just follow the
>directions and assume everything went right!

>Will the publishers have the ability to maintain their rights to their books
>under this platform?  It is their books, they have a right to sell them.  Or
>is this another free format where you need a special player to maintain the
>publishing rights?

>Then you get this portability problem.  Why get a Kindle when all you really
>need is a mini computer to read the books and do everything else.  People
>all got caught up in the novelty of a book reader without realizing it is
>just a one function mini computer with a black and white screen.  A sucker
>is born every minute!
>The solution for accessibility is to have a platform where people make
>documents accessible as they are being made.  Where the author does not know
>they are making the content accessible, they are just making their
>content.

>So when publishers sell books they are already formatted for accessibility
>without any further activity. And the publisher can encrypt these documents
>and maintain their rights to them without having to use any special format
>because this can be integrated into existing software, across
>platforms.   Accessibility is built into the document from the start so you
>do not need to add anything later. You do not have to know the rules of
>accessibility, you just author the document as you would today.

>All you need to read content is a text to speech engine in any
>language.  And by using any text to speech engine, this means that there is
>no added cost to the blind and it can be done in any language. This would
>also cause some competition to JAWS, so you would not run into the security
>problem that JAWS just announced because accessibility would be turned to a
>relationship between Braille manufacturers and software companies without
>the middle man.

>The AFB is testing my process right now.

>James Pepper

> "Aqaba is over there, it is just a matter of going!" - T. E. Lawrence
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