Advocates for the blind protest Authors Guild's stance on Kindle 2's read-aloud feature
The Reading Rights Coalition, a group that says it represents disabled readers, staged a protest today outside of the Authors Guild's New York offices. Its complaint: The guild's objections to the read-aloud feature of Amazon.com's Kindle 2 electronic book harms people with disabilities.
In February, the guild complained about the Kindle 2's text-to-speech function, which uses an electronic voice to recite text. The organization said then that the feature "presents a significant challenge to the publishing industry," suggesting that it could hurt the $1-billion market for audio books. Amazon, which introduced the second-generation Kindle in February, later backed off and said it would allow authors to disable the feature for their own titles.
Though that may have mollified some writers, it incensed another constituent -- people who can't read print because they are blind or learning disabled. The Reading Rights Coalition, whose members include the National Federation for the Blind and International Dyslexia Assn., maintains that the read-aloud feature should be available for all Kindle titles, which currently include more than 260,000 books and several dozen newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times.
The group organized this afternoon's rally, with protesters chanting such slogans as, "No need for greed, we want to read."
The guild issued a statement to the Associated Press, saying that the protest was "unfortunate and unnecessary." It did not return calls seeking further comment.
-- Alex Pham
This is America. We just make sure that the Reading Rights Coalition bands together to not purchase any audio books by authors that restrict their content.
Additionally Handicaped people could work with Kindle and the authors to provide a "PIN" number that would unlock these titles for them.
Face it this kind of device has been inevitable. Newspapers and print media better get on board or sleep with the buggy whips and dinosaurs.
Posted by: Dave Ketterer | April 08, 2009 at 08:12 AM
While I am very interested in Kindle and more than willing to pay for books, paper or electronic, I am still waiting for these books to be DRM free. It's just so much easier and "thought-free" when I don't have to worry about DRM and how I use something. The higher the resolution, the better it is too. We are nowhere near true 300-dpi but that's a technical limitation at this point.
Speaking of DRM-free, Amazon does have an awesome MP3 store that is DRM-free with a large selection and often good prices. It would be nice if they had the same thing with books. I would love loved to keep the text-to-speech feature. It won't be able to compete with audio books yet, but it's just convenient when I am on the go.
On the note about Amazon, I recently came across an interesting table that details the discounts on Amazon.
It is at http://www.uberi.com
Maybe someone will find it useful too.
Posted by: John | April 08, 2009 at 01:01 PM
I can't imagine that the robotic reading of the Kindle will replace the expressive reading of audio books. It doesn't for me.
Posted by: B Dalke | April 09, 2009 at 12:08 PM