When Amazon released the Kindle 2 electronic book reader on February 9, 2009, the company announced that the device would read e-books aloud using text-to-speech technology. Under pressure from the Authors Guild, Amazon has announced that it will give authors and publishers the ability to disable the text-to-speech function on any or all of their e-books available for the Kindle 2.
The Reading Rights Coalition, which represents people who cannot read print,will protest the threatened removal of the text-to-speech function from e-books for the Amazon Kindle 2 outside the Authors Guild headquarters in New York City at 31 East 32nd Street on April 7, 2009, from noon to 2:00 p.m. The coalition includes the organizations that represent the blind, people with dyslexia, people with learning or processing issues, seniors losing vision, people with spinal cord injuries, people recovering from strokes, and many others for whom the addition of text-to-speech on the Kindle 2 promised for the first time easy, mainstream access to over 245,000 books.
This was the disturbing news I learned today. To take something that would be so helpful to so many people , including my two VI children, and then say that it's going to have fewer choices. errgh. Please click on the title to sign the petition
Also, please visit Charlotte's Angels (link on sidebar). She's working on adoption #4, (child #5) and she's part of a TV station car giveaway. The trunk on her car is strapped down, it's in pretty bad shape and she could really use your vote.
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2 comments:
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I simply cannot understand why they would want to lose the many, many readers/customers they will lose by disabling this feature. Don't get it.
I signed the petition. It's a quick, easy one to sign and you can choose to not display your name if you so wish.
I'm still scratching my head on this one, Heather. Do not get it.
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