Weekend highlights: PDF’s hell for disabled people—plus a look at the newest Stanza e-reader update

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By David Rothman

For years TeleRead has complained how hard PDF can be on people with disabilities. Now Robert Kingett, a 12th-grader with severe tunnel vision, has shared a harrowing account of his struggles.

“I have come across numerous instances where I can’t even read a book, let alone navigate it,” he writes. “And here I’m supposed to study it for class!”

Robert finds a partial solution in Accessible PDF Reader, and meanwhile TeleRead community member Bob Martinengo is recommending PDF Equalizer. Just beware. DRM may thwart those trying to use special reading tools.

Also this weekend we published a quick look at the new version 1.9 of Stanza, the popular e-reading app for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

People are writing off this update as minor. I’m not so sure about that. I found that the new Stanza was far, far faster in loading up books; and students and others will benefit from its new book annotations feature.

Friendly reminder: Best follow Lexycycle’s advice and make backups when you upgrade to v. 1.9. Whatever the reason, 300 books vanished from one Stanza user’s iPhone when he did the upgrade.

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