Amazon, Kobo and Sony are petitioning the Federal Communications Commission to permanently exempt e-readers from certain federal accessibility laws for the disabled, arguing that e-readers are barebones devices designed for a single purpose: reading text.
The petition is interesting because it argues that e-readers’ value lies in the fact that they are inherently limited devices and that any non-reading functions they include, like experimental web browsers, are “rudimentary” and not very useful. Amazon, Kobo and Sony say that if they were forced to comply with FCC regulations and make e-readers fully accessible to people with disabilities, the essential nature of the devices would change, making them more like tablets, more expensive and, overall, less useful for their express purpose.
Okay, admittedly your products suck balls, but to go against implementing accessibility is wrong.
A dedicated reading device that also supported the blind would be awesome. It’s not like it’d have to be complicated or that difficult to do. It would need a headphone jack and text-to-speech, and enough intelligence to handle basic menu reading. It’d also open up EVERY book to the blind community, rather than only giving them access to audiobooks. Shame on them for trying to take the lazy, offensive way out.
I agree with Dennis. It also sets a weird precedent for these large companies to essentially say “accessibility is not worth the time, money, or energy” effectively making their products exclusive to those who have the luxury of being disability free. Not cool.
Yeah, those blind people just aren’t a big enough demographic to monetize with their razor-thin margins. Or maybe they already figured out Apple has that part of the market sewed up so they don’t want to compete?
Guess you’ve never used a Kindle ereader. They are the best on the market, by saying they “suck balls” (classy that) you reveal your ignorance on the subject. Love the site.
Accessibility is great in theory, but would the blind really want to hold an ebook reader when all they need is the audio? Wouldn’t a more specialized device, an mp3 player that can TTS ebooks for example, be a better form factor? Even iBooks doesn’t have simple TTS of an entire book (tell me if I’m wrong, I could only highlight a single line at a time). While accessibility is a noble goal and makes a lot of sense on more general purpose devices like tablets or phones, it shouldn’t be shoved in regardless of usability, just for the sake of a check mark on a feature list (or simply to satisfy the letter of the law).
That being said, some features, like larger text sizes, special fonts, and other accessibility features that help “readability” make a lot of sense on a pure reading device and some e-readers already implement these to some degree.
Blanket laws that force manufacturers to create crippled devices with poor usability defeats the entire purpose. Apply it where it makes sense, and don’t force it where it doesn’t. That’s my two cents.
Good why don’t you have Samsung pay for repealing the law so
Apple can enforce accessibility patents on Samsung, Amazon and Google.
Thanks.
My understanding is that Amazon, Kobo, et. al are petitioning for exemption for e-ink devices that currently do not have sound cards. . Both Amazon and Kobo manufacture tablets that would still be covered by the Act.
I’m torn; I theoretically want ALL devices to be accessible, but i realize that to make the device I and many other low vision folks use accessible for all requires the addition of hardware to a currently inexpensive, bare-bones device. E-ink really isn’t as responsive for “communications” as other devices; web browsing is rudimentary at best (even the bookstore sucks), and currently most e-ink devices do not have any audio capability at all. While the original Kindle did include a sound card, recent e-ink iterations have not. Ditto Kobo. (I’m not as familiar with the Sony models.)
As someone who enjoys reading on a glare-free screen with the e-ink font cranked up, I hate to think that my simple device will be discontinued just because it doesn’t talk — when the same manufacturers already makes tablet devices equipped with audio output. I’d rather see these manufacturers focus on accessibility for their tablets where modification involves mainly software modifications, not the addition of a sound card and speakers to a device that is silently serving some low vision users extremely well. E-ink is a god-send for those of us who can’t handle the glare of tablets, but sadly, I expect if e-ink devices are covered by this Act, they will simply disappear. And another device that meets some users’ needs perfectly will be gone because it didn’t meet everyone’s needs.
Dedicated eReaders do a good job of presenting text on the screen to read. Trying to make every device do every thing will destroy what is a good, single-purpose product.
iBooks does allow TTS (text-to-speech) of entire books, via VoiceOver. With VoiceOver active, a two-finger swipe downwards will initiate continuous reading. This is a built-in part of VO’s functionality.
It’s a common misconception to think that blind users only require audio. In fact, it’s very important to be able to back up, inspect words, have them pronounced phonetically when necessary (because TTS systems often mispronounce words), obtain definitions, and so forth. There’s also a wealth of additional functionality available in e-readers such as searching, bookmarking, metadata (Kindle’s x-ray feature, on recent models), highlighting and note-taking. Blind people wish to use those features too, and sometimes benefit from them even more than fully-sighted users.
We should also remember that visual acuity is a spectrum, not just fully sighted and completely blind. Legal blindness is less than total blindness, and there are many different kinds of visual impairment. Some conditions benefit from straightforward zooming, whereas some benefit from single-word paging displays, and so forth.
Visually impaired people aren’t just audio listeners; they’re a category of user that desires, deserves and can readily be given full access to content and devices using some specialised technologies. The ethos of accessibility is providing equal access (via alternate means, if necessary). To instead provide reduced/simplified access is precisely the sort of limitation that we must try to avoid.
Not if the DOJ gets their way. Not for media at least.
Although this notion of selling visual track movies etc as separate items bugs me. Why can’t itunes have one copy with mulitple audio, multiple subtitles etc.
C’mon Jim, you usually nail it, but claiming that Kindles, etc. “suck balls” only makes sense if you think that books “suck balls”. For someone who reads a lot, they are vastly superior to iPads and iPhones, which I read on only in an emergency.
None of which is to suggest that they should be exempt from accessibility guidelines that make sense: if Kindles are going to have a browser, experimental or not, it should comply with whatever accessibility guidelines are applicable to browsers, or it should be removed from the device. But Kindles without browsers shouldn’t be required to have browsers, nor should Kindles without sound be required to add sound.
There’s another weird aspect to this: Kindles used to be able to read all books with included speech-to-text software. But then publishers went after Amazon, and now that feature is only enabled when publishers allow it.
(And yes, Kindles are great, despite Jim’s knee-jerk hatred of everything non-Apple.)