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US DOJ Says Kindle In Classroom Hurts Blind Students
angry tapir writes "Three US universities will stop promoting the use of Amazon.com's Kindle DX e-book reader in classrooms after complaints that the device doesn't give blind students equal access to information. Settlements with Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Pace University in New York City and Reed College in Portland, Oregon, were announced Wednesday by the US Department of Justice. The National Federation of the Blind and the American Council of the Blind had complained that use of the Kindle devices discriminates against students with vision problems."
How does the kindle discriminate against the blind any more than, say, A BOOK?
Ocean is land, covered with water.
So, all Amazon needs to do is add a text-to-speech feature, and then they can sue any school that tries to use paper books instead of the Kindle, because compared to a text-to-speech Kindle, paper devices discriminate against students with vision problems.
Can anyone tell me how to set my sig on Slashdot?
Okay, I do understand the technicalities regarding why they say the Kindle is not as accessible to blind students as it is to sighted students. But what I don't get is - how is it different from the status quo? Blind students can't read regular textbooks already. What is it we can do for them with a printed textbook that we can't do with an electronic textbook?
And don't bring up braille, since that is a separate edition that has to be produced (and is thus independent of whether the "normal" book is on paper or electronic).
#DeleteChrome
That Harrison Bergeron is a warning........not a fucking "how-to" manual.
http://www.tnellen.com/cybereng/harrison.html
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
...is the capability of the lowest common denominator.
Braille doesn't provide much access to those with no arms.
THL phish sticks
The DOJ in the classroom hurts everyone.
"If you can have it and I can't I'll sue" - Pretty soon kids are lucky to have access to food and clothing, let alone an education. It's a losing strategy compared to say innovating and catering to diversity. Why can't they lobby for an ebook reader that does cater to the blind. Perhaps popup braile? Instead of wasting effort sending all your kids minds back to the stone age. Doesn't have to be a Kindle either. Leave the brand names out of it.
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There aren't any blind NASCAR drivers.
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As it stands right now, the Kindle doesn't have text-to-speech in the menu. Theoretically, if you can use the menu, you can use the Kindle (2 or DX, at least) to read to you using text-to-speech.
The thing is, Amazon has announced previously that they're working on enabling text-to-speech in the menu, so that particular issue will be moot (although I don't know what the timeline is). The bigger problem is that publishers can disable the text-to-speech in their e-books on the Kindle, which would render an accessible menu fairly pointless. (The same groups mentioned in the article also have been trying to pressure those publishers who have disabled it (e.g., Random House) to re-enable text-to-speech in their Kindle e-books.)
maybe they can force sighted students to wear blindfolds in class in future so that the blind have equal footing
The problem with slashdot is that most of its users were bullied and stuffed into lockers as kids!
You're talking COMMON SENSE there. If you're not careful, the agents of PC and Government interference will show up and arrest you.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
I know no one reads the articles, as that would get in the way of the knee-jerking we all love to do. But the article makes it quite clear: the kindle includes a text-to-speech application, but no way for visually impaired folks to navigate. Therefore, the Kindle is not the right choice of e-book reader for institutions such as colleges and universities to promote. It is the Kindle that is unusable by the blind, not the e-books themselves.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
It can convert words to audio itself. Not necessarily
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Wow, so full of hate. You see there are these things called BRAILLE TEXTBOOKS. But when the school starts pushing kindle (with real cost savings for sighted people), and at the same time refuses to use a DIFFERENT READER that has TEXT TO VOICE, then YES the blind people got a case. This is not about the school offering an ebook reader. It is about the school PUSHING an ebook reader that does NOT have the same capacities that other existing ebook readers do have. Yeah, I know you are full of your self and insisting that other people MUST be suing for no reasons. But if you had a brain you would realize that sometimes law suits are actually about real discrimination. Like this one.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
It is illegal for a resident of Canada covered by Canadian health care (say, a citizen, or landed immigrant) to pay for health care, and illegal for a health care provider to charge if they are in the "voluntary" system (which covers 99%+ of the population who can not legally pay anyway) which effectively forces almost all providers to be "in" the system. (There are specialty private clinics catering to non-citizen athletes, etc.)
This is similar to the socialized medicine systems in Cuba and North Korea (but, not, for example, the U.K. and other places with "two tier" socialized health care systems).
The argument is exactly this: it is unfair for some to have what others do not, even if they can pay for it.
This has some interesting effects: When I displayed my American-born son's American passport, he was seen in the clinic ahead of any Canadians who were there ahead of him. See, non-covered persons must pay, and pay more than the clinic receives from the government, so they get first dibs while Canadians wait in line.
In Liberty, Rene
Attractive supermodels should be required by law to date just as many overweight computer geeks living in their mom's basement as rich, attractive, professional athletes. We're being discriminated against! Tiger Woods is getting more pussy than we do!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
The problem isn't e-books or readers per-se. The Kindle even includes a text to speech application. But the Kindle lacks a way for visually impaired readers to navigate, and so, it is absolutely useless as it is. All that needs to be done is to tie the user interface into the text to speech application. That's it. Until that very, very simple problem is solved, colleges and universities are correct not to promote the use of this device. A good bit of publicity early on will ensure that all e-book readers in the future have this simple feature.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
You didn't read the FA. The complaint is that the navigation menus etc are not included in the text-to-speech converter.
Infuriate left and right