Category: accessible Devices
Does anyone have experience with the Amazon Kindle reader where you can download books from Amazon? I am wondering if the thing is accessible for the blind? Does it have a speech feature?
the kindle does have a screen reader for reading books , but no one has been able to varify if you can use the screen reader for navigating the unit as well, and downloading books.
i have heard it does read the books to you but now it does not read the menus from what i have heard. and a law sute is being filed with the maker of the device because it is not fully accessible to the blind because some colleges are going to be using it for textbooks. In fact one of the colleges in my state Arizona is going to be using it for one of there courses and there were some blind people on the news talking about how it was unfair for them. Because it is not fully accessible to us now.
This device was not developed for the blind. Like many gadgets, it just happens to have some features that make parts of it accessible, but it is not fully accessible. For now I would stick with the Victor Stream or BookSense.
well the kindle dx or whatever its called the newer larger format ones that are intended for PDF's and other text books should of had these features implemented if this was the market amazon was trying to get into. But like the above poster said this isn't a product developed for the blind and there are other accessable ways to access the text book material so i am not quite sure how far a lawsuit will go.
yah you got a good point. I think amazon is working with some colleges now. and as far as the law sute goes we will have to wait and see how far that goes. But, i think i heard that the NFB is supporting fileing the law sute against Amazon.
As long as the publishers make their materials available in some other digital format which can be accessed by a screen reader and/or a braille display, a lawsuit is most likely going to fall through.
Aren't text books already available in other accessible formats?
most of them yes how ever some are not and some colleges will scan that in, but consider yourself lucky if it happens. most likely as a student it's either crappy rfb and d readers or scanning for several hours, but it's better than having no books right? ug i'm picturing my stats text delemmas for this semester. meh
Well, thanks for all the info. I thought it was accessible fully. The reason I'm asking is I'm planning to upload my book to the amazon kindle store and I wanted blind people to be able to access it and buy it if they wanted. I'm hoping to get a real publisher or literary agent to hear of it that way and get a deal out of it. I know several people that did it this way and are now published authors.
This is the only thing I've come up with since all the rejection letters and emails for the last 10 years. If you don't have an agent; you can't get published. And, if you're not all ready published; you can't seem to get an agent. What a never ending circle!
Does anyone have any good ideas of where I should upload my book to so it is accessible for those running screen readers? If I knew how to make my own website; I'd put it there and people could pay me directly for the full downloadable version.
Any help on anything about accessibility or website creation for the book would be appreciated.
Chastity
well there are sites like lulu i believe, but i think there are e-books formats you can publish in that are accessible. However if you would like others to read the book as well you should still try to get it in the amazon kindle store.
I'll put it on the amazon kindle site and just see what happens.
Chastity
yah good point to the person who brought up the fact that for allot of college books you get them in the RFBD format, or a couple of times i had to buy the book and have it scanned and that takes time to do. So, some times it is frustrating and i hope the NFB winds this law sute against Amazon.
i stick with what i said before. Because today news came out that 2 major universities will not use the kindle reader because it is not accessible for the blind. An article from today said that the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and syracuse university have chosen to not use it. Article below.
from i4u:
http://www.i4u.com/article28279.html
a good article about it from ABC News
Schools Shun Kindle, Saying Blind Can't Use It - ABC News
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory?id=9050288
It is going to hurt Amazons business.
That's sort of what I'm finding out and that's to bad because amazon is going to lose a lot of potential customers that way. Oh, well, I'll still post my book to amazon and then figure out some way to put a buy button on my website for those of us who are blind in case they are interested in the html version. I'm also checking into some programs out there that say they can convert text documents to speech and see how they word and if it's worth using. One way or another I'll make this thing availble for everyone. I think I'll email amazon again on this too.
Hey Chinchillac, i love your persistance and ambition. Good to hear you are not giving up. I look forward to reading your book when you have it ready.
well i'd love to see the kindle be made accessible. It's cheaper than any of the blindy daisy readers. Plus I like the idea of being able to use the same equipment as mainstream or sighted persons.
I understand there is not a program that can be installed on your PC, so I guess that kills the problem. Now I don't know if it is screen reader friendly, but I suspect it is. You can use your laptop, or netbook to read.
text to audio was good i used it in school to transfer stuff i scanned into audio to listen to on the train and it did a pretty good job and its tts engine is clear and easy to understand. As for the kindle.. well here is another reason the iPhone is becoming more compelling, there is a kindle app for the iPhone, so if thats fully accessible with voice over you can get all your kindle books and read them on the iPhone. And apple is supposedly working on braille support as well.
i'll stick with the iphone if the kindle app is available