Tech Matters: Using tech for positive social change

President Marc Mauer of the National Federation of the Blind just had an excellent op ed published by the Baltimore Sun entitled Bias against blind book lovers . Mauer does a great job in capturing the advocacy position of the Reading Rights Coalition . This is a case of dueling moral high grounds. The Authors Guild are pressing the cause of authors' rights to make more money (in theory). The Reading Rights Coalition and NFB are advocating for the equal rights of disabled people. How does society choose between competing moral high grounds? I don't know of an algorithm for this, but I do know how people think. And, the Authors Guild is suffering because the NFB and Reading Rights Coalition has done a great job of articulating the differences. My take: Authors Guild: we want to insist that publishers turn off text-to-speech so our authors can make more money over how much they make from the standard text ebook. But, we'd be happy if they charged extra for text-to-speec...

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...