[Web4lib] Kindle vs. Accessibility

[Thomas Dowling]

Kindle vs. Accessibility.  Just a reminder that [some] publishers and authors
are mired in obsolete thinking about technology, and still have enough clout to
say "Jump" and have Amazon answer "How high?"


<http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/14/1356253>

'The Kindle has a number of "remote kill" flags built in to the hardware that,
among other things, allow the text-to-speech function to be disabled at any
time on a book-by-book basis.  But what no one at Amazon will discuss is what
other flags are lurking in the Kindle format: is there a "read only once" flag?
A "no turning the pages backwards" flag?"'


<http://www.keionline.org/blogs/2009/05/13/kindle-2-vs-reading-disabled-students/>

'Beginning yesterday, Random House Publishers began to disable text-to-speech
remotely. The TTS function has apparently been remotely disabled in over 40
works so far.'

This article also provides a good description of how text-to-speech benefits
readers with dyslexia and language-based learning disorders.


-- 
Thomas Dowling
tdowling at ohiolink.edu