Tech Matters: Using tech for positive social change

Last September, I wrote a Beneblog post: Objecting to Accessibility Weaseling , about Amazon and other ebook reader makers trying to dodge out on making their devices accessible. This is an update on that fight.  It's always been highly ironic to me that the most natural buyers of ebooks, people with disabilities that make regular print useless, are constantly blocked in getting digital content that will talk to them, show up enlarged or in Braille!  So, last year, Benetech joined with the National Federation of the Blind and over twenty other groups that care about consumers with disabilities to object to an attempt by Amazon and their competitors to secure a permanent exemption from accessibility requirement for many of the ebook readers. Something that particularly bothered the advocates was Amazon's dropping features already in their basic ebook readers in what looked like an attempt to get out of accessibility requirements. This week, in an important decision by t...

This comment came to our volunteer email list today, and I got permission to repost. It captures the power of Bookshare so well: Just had to share this with you guys. My husband went out to dinner last night with a friend. His friend mentioned that my husband really ought to look into getting a Kindle for me, so I could read what everybody else is reading (a Kindle probably wouldn't work for me, but the thought was kind). So my husband told his friend about Bookshare, and how Bookshare staff and volunteers and outsourcers get books scanned and proofed and available. His friend said that sounded nice but thought that if I wanted to have access to current books and a wide variety, I really needed a Kindle. Chuckle. My husband asked his friend for an example, and his friend gave him the name of a newish and off-the-beaten path book. Guess what? I'd already downloaded it from Bookshare and read it, and my husband knew that because I'd mentioned the title to him, and to...

Why You Shouldn't Depend on a For-Profit Business to Defend Your Civil Rights The Kindle2 is a hot topic in the disability field right now. Many print-disabled people (people who are blind, severely dyslexic or a have a physical disability that keeps them from reading regular print books) see electronic books as a dream come true. But, it's a dream that the commercial ebook vendors keep dashing. The Kindle2's text-to-speech feature wasn't something that actually worked for blind people, but you could imagine how a software update could make this into an incredible product. But, we just saw Amazon fold when the Authors Guild pushed them to turn off the voice of these books: Amazon to flip on Kindle . And that is setting back the cause of people with disabilities who need that kind of access. We have an action by Amazon that sets back years of work to make ebooks accessible. Print-disabled people of the world shouldn't be surprised that Amazon isn't going out...

I’ve been watching with interest the legal controversy over the synthetic speech capability of the new version of the Amazon Kindle, such as the coverage on Boing-Boing entitled Author's Guild claims text-to-speech software is illegal . I think it’s time to write a series of short essays on the struggle for accessible books, starting with this brouhaha. This isn’t a new issue. George Kerscher and I wrote a major essay on the topic seven(!) years ago entitled the Soundproof Book . In it, we pointed out the irony that the first generation of ebook readers being inaccessible to blind people. This irony continues: it’s a terrible shame that Amazon (and other ebook device vendors) keeps putting out ebook products that are inaccessible to the blind! More on that in another essay. The essence of the Soundproof Book essay was the dueling moral high grounds: author’s rights vs. the right to access. Since these are both generally good from society’s standpoint, how do you handle the...

Last year, the National Federation of the Blind took on Amazon.com about the accessibility of their website, which NFB felt at one time had been quite accessible, but which had declined in accessibility. My impression was that this advocacy was linked to the Target department store lawsuit, because Amazon does the technical work behind the Target website, which has been inaccessible. NFB got them to commit to work on accessibility . So, someone came from Amazon.com to speak about this at this years' NFB Convention in Dallas. Craig Woods started by telling the big rocks, gravel, sand, water story, the one where after filling the jar with rocks, there's still room to add gravel, and then sand and finally water. The moral of the story is that if you want to work on your big priorities, you have to get them in your jar first, because otherwise the small stuff will keep you from getting to them. The speech itself was pretty basic: Amazon cares about its customers above all else...

Amazon.com: Kindle This is the first ebook product that gives me a vision of where the book is going to go. I am imagining students with complete libraries without having to carry twenty pounds in their backpacks! And, while not perfect, it gives a vision of where this technology will go. Sort of like the iPod: not the first of its type, but the one that pointed the way forward and ignited the field. I bought my Kindle on the first day of availability, and received it the day before Thanksgiving (2007). By the end of Thanksgiving, I finished reading my first book, Stardust. It's comfortable to hold and to read. The flash at each page turn was initially bothersome, but quickly faded from notice. The textsize is handy for someone with aging eyeballs like mine. I haven't read the manual: it's pretty easy to figure out. What makes this an extraordinary device is the combination of wireless ease with the e-ink display. Here are my three downsides: 1. The display is really black ...