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Accessibility and the new Kindle
May 7, 2009 | 3:02 pm
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By Paul Biba
From an article on Abledbody. Thanks to Robert Martinengo for the link.
Amazon’s Director of Kindle Books, Laura Porco, said the company is working with three of the top five textbook publishers — Pearson, Cengage Learning and Wiley, along with more than 75 University Press Publishers to make their educational materials available in the Kindle Store starting this summer. With content accessible in an audio version to everyone — not just to those who can “prove” they have a print disability — Amazon and publishers have taken a big step in breaking down barriers to educational content for people with disabilities. …
But the National Federation of the Blind doesn’t think the Kindle DX goes far enough: The e-book reader’s menus and controls aren’t audio-accessible to the blind and visually impaired. The NFB says deploying this device in college and universities would violate state and federal laws requiring equal access to textbooks and course materials for students with disabilities.
“We are appalled that Amazon is releasing a new Kindle device ostensibly for the use of students that does not contain features that make it accessible to the blind, said Dr. Marc Maurer, president of the NFB. “Amazon [should] introduce a user interface for the Kindle that is accessible to the blind as soon as possible. Until [then], no college or university should deploy this device,” he added.
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Comments:
They are also using exactly the same 6 font sizes on the DX as on the Kindle 2. With the larger screen, and the landscape mode, Amazon could easily offer a largest font size 2-3x bigger than this. Landscape helps because the largest practical font size depends on how many characters fit on one line.
PDFs are not reflowable on the DX, but custom PDFs can have whatever font size you want. On the other hand, text to speech does not work with PDFs.
Complaining about the Kindle when it’s better than standard textbooks seems backwards. Maybe it’s not perfect but shouldn’t we celebrate improvements rather than castigate those making them?
Rob Preece
BooksForABuck
This is the sort of thing that drives people far far right…
As much as I might criticize the approach of some disability advocacy groups at times, I do have to say that colleges bring a lot of accessibility woes upon themselves.
Why do prestigious universities agree to pilot a device that leaves out a number of their students? Why don’t they use their leverage to push for greater accessibility?
The ADA makes it clear that putting up a new building without providing wheel-chair access is against the law. Why is it so difficult to imagine extending that commitment to accessibility to access to information?