Online Petition Urges Amazon to Make the Kindle 2 Accessible

The rumors started a couple of days before Amazon.com announced a pending release date for the new and improved Kindle, the very successful wireless e-book reader which the company began selling in 2007.  The online forums and interactive list-servs frequented by people who are blind and visually impaired were abuzz with the rumor that  the next iteration of the wireless e-book reader would talk! 

I have to admit a little quickening of my own heart as my mind began to imagine scenarios of downloading any of the 26,000 currently available  e-books on Amazon.com and reading them instantly...  I thought about the book I had ordered just the week before as a birthday gift for my brother-in-law.  I am dying to read that book, "Cuisines of the Axis of Evil and Other Irritating States: A Dinner Party Approach to International Relations," by Chris Fair.  I am pretty skeptical about lumping those three countries together and calling them an "axis of evil."  I mean, I can see lumping together Iraq and Iran, although not necessarily in the context of evil, but really, adding North Korea to the mix?  What kind of sense does that make?  But, I do love to cook, and planning menus that feature kimchi and homemade Bul Ko Ki, along with tabbula, and maybe some lamb-stuffed grape leaves, well, I was getting hungry just thinking about the possibilities. 

The thing is that BookShare

http://www.bookshare.org/, which is like a (legal) Nabster for people who can't read print independently, so it allows people to scan in books and then shares those DAISY and braille files with registered members, and the National Library Service (NLS)

http://www.loc.gov/nls, which has been recording and distributing Talking Books since before World War II, and Now some of those books can be downloaded in digital formats - and Audible.com

http://www.audible.com/, which makes audio books available for about the same price as their print counterparts, and the Gutenberg project

http://www.gutenberg.org

which makes many of the classics in the public domain available as text files, all of these and several other similar services allow people who are blind and visually impaired, and people who have other print disabilities, to access a larger number of books and magazines than any of us would have ever dreamed possible before the advent of the internet and the availability of downloadable digital formats.  But, the number of books that are available from any of these purveyors is necessarily limited.  BookShare makes 15 or so best-sellers from the New York Times monthly lists available for download in DAISY or braille, and lots of members and lots of volunteers scan in hundreds of books and textbooks every month..   The National Library Service releases around 30 new digitally recorded  titles each week.  Audible.com is a commercial publisher that  tends to concentrate on the most popular best sellers and the genres that appeal to the broadest spectrum of readers.  Project Gutenberg has lots of available titles, but there aren't any books from 2009. 

I would be unlikely to find a book making fun of W while it delivers recipes  from the countries included in the "Axis of Evil" at any of these internet locales. When I bought the book as a gift for someone else, I knew that My chances of downloading that book, and reading it, myself,  within seconds of downloading it, were pretty small.  But, when I heard about the text-to-speech engine that would be featured in the Kindle 2, I was thinking,  if I could get the print book from Amazon, maybe they would also sell it as an e-book, too, and if the new Kindle included a text-to-speech engine, then my days of waiting for months or even years for a book I wanted to read, even a rather frivolous cookbook that takes its inspiration from making fun of the Bush Administration, might be over!

All too soon, my hopes were dashed.  When Amazon.com released the details about its latest Kindle, it became obvious that my days of waiting to read the latest books are not numbered only by my ability to save up the $359.00 for the newest digital player.  Although the Kindle 2 does have a text-to-speech engine that uses the same voices I'm used to listening to on my Victor Reader Stream, the accessible digital player I use to listen to the BookShare and NLS and Audible.com titles, none of the controls on the Kindle 2 speak, so there is no way for a person who cannot see to download titles from the net, or access any of the other features on the Kindle that make it useable. 

What a shame!  Amazon spent time and money - According to their CEO, Jeff Bezos, it took four years -- to develop the wireless e-book reader.  The developers identified a good text-to-speech engine and built it into their digital book reader, but they didn't spend the relatively few extra dollars it would have taken to make the controls accessible. 

In recent years, Amazon.com has made great progress in making their web site more accessible to consumers who are blind and visually impaired.  Navigating their web site used to be a nightmare that involved listening to seemingly endless streams of letters and numbers and unintelligible phonemes that were associated with all the graphical content on the site, and even if I could manage to find a book or cd I wanted to buy, I had to ask for sighted help to complete the order form and put in my credit card information. 

But, now their web site, www.amazon.com/access, is totally accessible, and unlike its text-only predecessor, the "/access" web site seems to contain just as many products and just as much written information about them as its more graphical cousin, Amazon.com.  I did most of my holiday shopping in December without ever leaving my living room!  In fact, I find the accessible site that points to millions of books and cds and downloadable music titles, and kitchen gadgets, and toys, and even groceries is pretty dangerous; it's so easy to buy stuff that it's a wonder to me that the economy is in so much trouble if consumer spending is really the grease that keeps the economic cogs spinning. 

So, the web site is easy to use, and there's a wireless device that allows readers to download books and blogs and web content and then read it at their convenience, and this device has a text-to-speech capability with pretty decent speech.  But the buttons and switches that allow a reader to use the device don't talk.  That's disappointing.  Disappointing to me, and also to the blindness community.  The forums and list servs are buzzing again. One of the many e-mail messages I read on the subject was titled, "Amazon takes the Kind out of Kindle." 

What do modern souls do with their disappointments?  Well, after moaning and complaining and wishing things could be otherwise, they often create mechanisms for contacting the source of their disappointments and asking them for change.  That is the route the blindness community is taking. 

Now there's an online petition asking Amazon to make the next version of its Kindle accessible to people who are blind and visually impaired.  You can reach the petition at

http://www.petitiononline.com/Kindle2/petition.html 

It's easy to access and sign; the form works well with screen readers (and presumably screen magnification programs as well), and your privacy is guaranteed. 

The community of people who are blind is not a very big one, when compared with other market demographics, and although people who are blind do love to read, it's unlikely that the market share represented by people with print disabilities is particularly large.  (At least, that's why the manufacturers of so many assistive technology products tell us their software and hardware and talking this and buzzing that's are so expensive when we compare their costs to the prices other people pay for similar devices without built-in accessibility.)  But, maybe our petition will inform the product developers at Amazon.com about a situation they hadn't thought about when they were designing their latest wireless e-book reader.  And maybe they will be convinced to make the controls on the next Kindle accessible. 

After all, after years of asking them to, Apple finally made an IPOD that speaks all its menus late last year.  It's a mainstream product, and like so many other disability curb cuts, its accessibility features are appealing to lots of consumers, not just those with vision or print disabilities. 

If all of the people who cannot read print sign the petition, and all of their families and teachers and friends and employers also sign the petition, maybe it won't take Amazon.com so long to do the right thing and make the next version of their Kindle accessible.  Right now, the book I want to read seems to be out of stock at Amazon.com.  Maybe by the time Amazon.com is shipping the Kindle 3 that book will be back in the warehouse and downloadable in an e-format as well, and maybe, if lots of people sign the online petition, and the developers at Amazon.com pay attention to its content and the number of signatures, I will be able to download that book, and tens of thousands of others, just as instantly and just as efficiently as my sighted friends and neighbors.  Then my problem won't be having to wait to read what I want to read, it will be fitting work and cooking and socializing into my new life, which will be so filled with books and magazines and blogs!  What a lovely set of time challenges to imagine!

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Posted Feb 24 2009, 10:34 AM by PennyRdr