[A2k] AP article: Schools shun Kindle, saying blind can't use it

Wed Nov 11 12:16:01 2009

--
[ Picked text/plain from multipart/alternative ]
Schools shun Kindle, saying blind can't use it
By RACHEL METZ (AP) =96 5 hours ago

SAN FRANCISCO =97 Amazon's Kindle can read books aloud, but if you're
blind it can be difficult to turn that function on without help. Now
two universities say they will shun the device until Amazon changes
the setup.

The National Federation of the Blind planned to announce Wednesday
that the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Syracuse University won't
consider big rollouts of the electronic reading device unless Amazon
makes it more accessible to visually impaired students.

Both schools have some Kindles that they bought for students to try
this fall, but now they say they won't look into buying more unless
Amazon makes changes to the device.

"These universities are saying, `Our policy is nondiscrimination, so
we're not going to adopt a technology we know for sure discriminates
against blind students,'" said Chris Danielsen, a spokesman for the
National Federation of the Blind.

Amazon.com Inc. spokesman Drew Herdener said many visually impaired
customers have asked Amazon to make the Kindle easier to navigate. The
company is working on it, he said.

According to the National Federation of the Blind, there are about 1.3
million legally blind people in the U.S. Many more people have other
disabilities such as dyslexia that make it difficult to read.

The Kindle could be promising for the visually impaired because of its
read-aloud feature, which utters text in a robotic-sounding voice. For
blind students in particular, the Kindle could be an improvement over
existing studying techniques =97 such as using audio books or scanning
books page by page into a computer so character-recognition software
can translate it for a text-to-speech program.

But activating the Kindle's audio feature probably requires a sighted
helper, because the step involves manipulating buttons and navigating
choices in menus that appear on the Kindle's screen.

The federation says the device should be able to speak the menu
choices as well.

Electronic books still make up a small portion of the overall book
market, but it's a fast-growing segment. In hopes of getting even more
people to try the Kindle, Amazon released the $489 Kindle DX this
year, which has a large screen and is geared toward textbook and
newspaper readers. The company then worked with several colleges to
give out Kindles this fall with digital versions of their textbooks on
them.

The Federation for the Blind sued one of the schools that participated
in this pilot program =97 Arizona State University =97 in June, along with
the American Council of the Blind and a blind ASU student, arguing it
was discriminating against blind students. That case is ongoing.

The group also filed complaints with the Department of Justice against
five other schools that are participating in the Kindle trial with
Amazon. Wisconsin and Syracuse are not among those schools.

Ken Frazier, director of Wisconsin-Madison's library system, said the
library bought 20 Kindle DX devices for use in a history class this
fall. Though he's not sure how many blind students are at his school,
he said many students have difficulties reading texts for various
reasons, such as learning disabilities.

"Our experience is that when you make technology accessible, everybody
benefits," he said.

---
Equal, not Separate, Reading Rights - http://www.readingrights.org/
---

***************************************************************************
Manon Ress
manon.ress@keionline.org
Knowledge Ecology International
1621 Connecticut Ave, NW, Washington, DC 20009 USA
Tel.:  +1.202.332.2670, Fax: +1.202.332.2673