Comments on: Nine disability organizations speak out about Kindle 2 text to speech

By: Jim Mattingly

Jim Mattingly — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 05:37:45 +0000

Any action that limits an individuals ability to benefit from the vast universe of human knowledge, is wrong. Primarily there are the blind and other handicapped persons to consider, but let’s not forget the aged. Many of us who are 50 and over, find prolonged reading difficult. TTS would allow us to stay competitive in our fields by providing greater ease of access to knowledge. I for one am very disappointed in this development – it does not serve the public interest to disable a technology in which millions of people would benefit in substantial ways. The companies set on doing this need to get with the times… and become more creative in their methods of making money, rather than stifling the creativity that benefits us all!

By: Bob Martinengo

Bob Martinengo — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 17:45:46 +0000

Chris, thanks for keeping this thread alive. You mention the idea of a ‘national registry’, which was apparently floated by the Authors Guild. Whats so bad about that? People with disabilities must register to receive services from Bookshare, RFB&D, the NLS, etc., so why not a registry for access to the Kindle and other products?

I seem to recall that the Google settlement also talks about access for the disabled and spells out certain conditions that have to be met – you don’t just get to say you are disabled and get the keys to the content. What will public libraries do when confronted by a person who says they are disabled and wants ‘special’ access to the Google book-terminal? Perhaps they will also ask for some help in determining who is ‘eligible’.

The Authors Guild argument boils down to saying that text-to-speech is a different output format than visual display and must be licensed accordingly. Makes sense to me. If this means ebooks with speech enabled cost a little more, maybe ‘libraries for the blind’ should make up the difference.

By: Chris Danielsen

Chris Danielsen — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 20:07:24 +0000

The argument that text-to-speech creates a derivative work is completely bogus. An e-book isn’t inherently visual; it’s just a stream of data that can be interpreted in many different ways. Authors and publishers are denying the blind and others with print disabilities the ability to pay for a book, download it, and start reading it–something we have never been able to do before and which we would gladly pay for. They are actually telling us that we should have to pay extra for the TTS or sign up for some kind of national registry. This is discrimination against us, and also a form of censorship since they are restricting who gets to read their books. And since we now get books for free from alternative services, and under the Kindle model we would actually be paying authors instead, it’s a boneheaded business decision. Also, it’s hypocritical from people who get all preachy about the importance of everyone having access to information and ideas, the sacredness of the written word, and all that. Shame on any author who disables text-to-speech and shame on Amazon for caving in to their bullying.

By: LibbyC

LibbyC — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 15:40:18 +0000

I feel more for the blind consumers than I do for Amazon. Everything that is specially adapted for the blind costs between 2 and 5 times as much as similar items for the sighted. Now we have devices that can help mainstream reading for the blind and other disabled populations, and everyone is trying to restrict them. Do you really think that a computer-generated voice is going to put the actors who do audiobooks (and their publishers) out of business?

By: Karen in TN

Karen in TN — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 14:11:29 +0000

Actually, that ability is on many desktop viewers (or could be) as well. Anytime you buy a DRM’d title from any other vendor, there is a notice informing you if that title has read-aloud (the desktop version of TTS) disabled (along with disabling copy and print ability). It’s not a new ability, just a newly advertised one in an ereader.

By: Jim Lester

Jim Lester — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 23:05:42 +0000

I actually feel for Amazon here, as the lawyers (well ours, Amazon’s and the Publishers) all seem to agree, the use of TTS is considered to be a “Performance”, and is not allowed under most of the current contracts.

The only thing I think Amazon did wrong is to put the feature in, in the first place without first consulting with the Publishers about the rights involved, and getting appropriate permissions established in their DRM.