Disability Coalition Rallies to Defend Talking Kindle
Wednesday, April 1st, 2009 08:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jesse_the_kI've now heard and tried the talking Kindle 2. It's basic, but it's there. Folding assistive tech into mainstream products is Universal Design, one of my holy grails. That the Author's Guild is claiming this will cut into sales of audiobooks is evidence that they've not sat down and just listened to the Kindle. The TTS is nice, but it's nowhere near as good as the current top-of-the-line technology, much less a human narrator. People without print impairments read audio books while exercising and on the road; neither of those activities lend themselves to audio Kindle reading.
So I'm delighted to report that the Reading Rights Coalition plans an April 4th demonstration against the Author's Guild (as well as the on 24-25 April at the LA Festival of Books). Participants include both organizations of & for the blind (NFB and ACB); AHEAD representing folks providing disability services in secondary education; AAPD, a cross-disability lobbying group; DAISY the standards organization which has guided the creation of structured, random-access audio with parallel text; and many more.
So I'm delighted to report that the Reading Rights Coalition plans an April 4th demonstration against the Author's Guild (as well as the on 24-25 April at the LA Festival of Books). Participants include both organizations of & for the blind (NFB and ACB); AHEAD representing folks providing disability services in secondary education; AAPD, a cross-disability lobbying group; DAISY the standards organization which has guided the creation of structured, random-access audio with parallel text; and many more.
