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Nine disability organizations speak out about Kindle 2 text to speech
March 19, 2009 | 3:28 pm
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By Paul Biba
The following is a press release from The International Center for Disability Resources on the Internet. http://www.icdri.org/legal/Kindle_Issues.htm. Thanks to Robert Martinengo for the heads up.
On 16 March 2009, a letter went out from disability organizations to six major publishers that sell Kindle ebooks: Random House, Harper Collins, Simon & Schuster, Macmillan, Penguin and Hachette. These letters insist that Text to Speech be turned back on. At this time, Random House has disabled text to speech on all of its ebooks. Letters were a collaborative effort written on behalf of nine disability organizations: The National Federation of the Blind, the DAISY Consortium, the American Foundation for the Blind, the American Council of the Blind, the International Dyslexia Association, the American Association of People with Disabilities, the National Center for Learning Disabilities and the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law.
Here is part of one of the letters:
We are even more appalled to learn that Amazon, under pressure, would henceforth allow publishers and authors at their whim to withdraw mainstream access to electronic books for those requiring aural access. This seems especially ironic in the wake of the proposed Google-AAP settlement, which guarantees mainstream access (including persons with disabilities) to all copyrighted books that are not currently offered for sale. We are saddened to see that Random House has now instructed that text-to-speech be disabled for all devices that read electronic books. For a terribly long time those with print disabilities have been consigned to alternative formats with limited choices on expensive special purpose machines. Now that the opportunity for mainstream access to books on equal terms is possible, this community will not allow publishers and authors to deny them the right to read.
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Comments:
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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!