By Cj Gorelik
Controversy and Lawsuit
The obvious must be stated: the Kindle, an e-reader by Amazon, is a bit drama prone. From its test run in universities, particularly Arizona State University (ASU), the device has had its streak of controversy.
Kindle’s incorporation into ASU classrooms resulted in a lawsuit against the school from the National Federation of the Blind (NFB) and the American Council of the Blind (ACB). Both advocate organizations filed a lawsuit on behalf of blind students who pointed out that even though the device could read books out loud, that function was inaccessible to someone who is completely blind without seeking help from a sighted person. The problem was that menus used to access the reader’s text-to-speech function were not spoken aloud thus disabling them to be easily navigated by people with low vision or blindness.
NFB and ACB felt that the university had discriminated against their blind students when it decided to participate in a pilot program in which printed text books were completely replaced by Amazon’s e-reader. Only three classes participated in this endeavor. However, since the text-to-speech on the Kindle is not accessible to the blind, those three classes became unavailable to visually impaired students.
According to USA Today, the lawsuit has recently been settled between Arizona State University, the National Federation of the Blind and the American Council of the Blind. USA Today reports that the lawsuit “does not involve payment of any damages or attorney's fees. Rather, the groups cited ASU's commitment to providing access to all of its programs for students with disabilities, and noted that the pilot program was already ending this spring.” According to this same article, ASU continues to allege that it had not violated any laws and will produce more effort in making sure that future pilot programs are inclusive and available to all students.
Change
Amazon was quick to respond to Kindle’s accessibility issues. The organization released the following statement: “we’ve heard from many of our blind or vision impaired customers who are excited about Kindle 2’s text to speech technology. Some of these customers have asked that we make Kindle even easier for them by adding navigation accessible to the blind. We want to let those customers know that this is something we are working on and we look forward to making it available in the future.”
Although no official date has been set, Amazon claims that it will include spoken menus and the ability to increase font size on the Kindle 2 model by this upcoming summer.
More Controversy
The Authors’ Guild is currently attacking the text-to-speech function of Kindle 2. This organization is focusing on the money factor, claiming that rights to e-books do not include rights to audio books which, according to the Guild’s President, Roy Blount Jr., is “a billion dollar industry and growing.” Read his full article to The New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/25/opinion/25blount.html?_r=1
Amazon claims that they have not broken any laws and have the right to sell both e-books and audio books as one. However, the company has backed off, likely due to fear of legal action from Authors’ Guild, and allowed publishers to withdraw the audio function on a title by title basis. You can read Amazon’s full statement by going to http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/27/amazon-backs-off-text-to-speech-feature-in-kindle/For obvious reasons, Amazon’s actions have sparked protests, from blind advocacy groups, which were recently held outside of Authors’ Guild, New York headquarters.
You Decide
Arizona State University officially claimed no legal liability in its pilot program, but promised to make such programs available to all students in the future. This was enough to settle the lawsuit with NFB and ACB.
Amazon seemed to do the right thing for the visually impaired community by admitting to flaws of the first Kindle model and assuring improvements to its second model, in the near future, which would make the device easily accessible by the blind. Unfortunately, Amazon seemed to squirm when facing challenges from the Authors’ Guild and allowed each publisher to decide which books will be available in audio and which ones will not.
Authors’ Guild, a lobbyist for authors, is interested in protecting revenue and profit of writers. The Guild believes that authors write their books without the intent or expectation of the text’s dictation. Since Amazon is making money from reading the books aloud, something that written text cannot accomplish on its own, the authors should get a portion of revenue generated from the audio of their texts.
In the interests of adding depth to the story, it should be noted that Amazon has landed into another class action lawsuit for breech of contract against Kindle users. Read the story at http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/07/31/tech/main5201198.shtml
Share Your Thoughts
Let me know your thoughts on the Kindle soap opera. Also, have you had any experiences with an e-reader? What kind and what did you like/dislike about it?
No comments:
Post a Comment