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

[James Pepper]

Steve:
The Publisher's Weekly article says ““We take in books from different
publishers in a variety of formats and convert it to our own format,” said
Kurzweil.”



They are converting the books into a new format that is specific to their
reader.  So you have the same problem as before where publishers have to
rely on an outside source for their conversions of their files.  The
Publisher would rather control it all; they do not want something like
Kindle taking over their product! Of course Kurzweil will do a much better
job on accessibility than Kindle, but we need a fundamental solution to this
problem.



What we need is for publishers to be able to convert documents so that they
can sell them to everyone including the blind; one format for everyone.  Since
they already make their content into PDF format to print, why not make PDF
format accessible to the blind as they make the document.



So I rebuilt a word processor to make PDF documents accessible to the blind
by just typing the content and adding pictures etc.  The basic concepts used
are universal and will work across programming languages and thus across
platforms and there is no language barrier.  My accessible PDFs work out of
the box in Adobe Reader and do not require any special settings or
accessibility settings.  You can if you want to, but they are not necessary
to run the files.  One size fits all.


The documents are accessible to JAWS, Window Eyes and text to speech
engines. Text to speech engines have enhanced features because of my format
so they are very effective in page navigation and reading content. For
instance I believe I can solve the problem of using Voiceover on the
IPhone for PDF files handling text so it will not act like an 8 track tape,
but be interactive.

But this is not just for PDF format, I believe if this was integrated into
Office it would open up those programs to the blind.  Also I understand why
their formats are not working for the blind and what I did to fix the
problems.

I made this using JAWS 8 to test the format, so it is backwards compatible
for those who cannot afford the new screen readers.  The content can be
enlarged and the text is clear and not pixilated.  The fonts are large and
can be scanned using OCR if necessary.  This works for forms and documents
with all of the content clearly read in the correct order even with text to
speech engines.

I created a ballot for the 2008 election to be tested where all you need to
have at the poling place is a PC and the form creates both a paper trail and
an electronic tally and it can be made in most languages.   Also I rebuilt
some Social Security Forms to show what can be done in English and Spanish
and I can lay out the LSAT to be accessible today!


So the result is bringing enhancement to an existing technology that most
publishers use today, just to print their books.  Therefore the solution is
not to create a new format but to enhance existing formats so that
publishers can sell their content to everyone.


I learned how to do this because when I got my sight back from tunnel vision
I knew the problems of accessibility first hand, and because I can see I am
able to look at the software used to create accessible documents
and identify what is going wrong, and so I fixed it!

James Pepper