Good to know, good to know. Not that anyone would ever want to remove DRM.:)
Though I don't understand why shortcovers and kindle do not offer the same flexibility with font and color schemes on all their devices.
the stanza is definitely the most accessible e-book reader on the iPHone. I have been reviewing them for accessibility on my blog (iPhone Access. What Stanza lacks is content. The Kindle and Shortcover bookstores have more current material.
I am an early Audible subscriber. I still have a legacy plan! As happy as I am with Audible, the Audible catalog is incomplete. There are tons of books that I want to read which have not been recorded. The Kindle could give me access to them with TTs.
I am legally blind, so usually reading on my iPod Touch is out of the question. I just tested the Kindle app out with my wife's Kindle account. I can actually read the largest font settings with my reading glasses.
I don't think I could read on the iPhone for a long time, but I certainly could do it for short periods of time. I have to hold the device up to my face, which is uncomfortable, but I have to do that with anything I read. The Touch is lighter than any of Neal Stephenson's books, even the paperbacks.
Being visually impaired, I can't use a laptop because I can't get close enough to the screen. The keyboard gets in the way. Having a detachable monitor is what I have always been looking for. Now I just need to find a way to hold it close to my face while I type.
People with disabilities can use specialized devices, which are made available only by prescription to people with a qualifying disability, that play copies of works produced under an exception to the U.S. copyright statute (17 USC 121). Kindle 2, being available to all, does not meet this requirement.
Have you ever used devices dedicated to the blind. They are expensive, ugly, complicated to use and do not offer what the Kindle does.
Being legally blind with functional vision, I like to read, but I cannot for long periods of time. With the Kindle 1's largest font, that eye strain is reduced somewhat. The Kindle 2 is the next step towards my ideal reading device, one that allows me to go back and forth with large print and TTS.
Losing TTS (Amazon's discussion is likely tantamount to this) will kill this move forward for accessible, aesthetic and feature rich device for the partially sighted.
Skipping over the already well-discussed audio rights issue, let me rant about access for the visually impaired. Blount's arguments in the Times' OIp-Ed in regards to the lack of accessibility of the Kindle 2 to the blind were flawed. I hope that he is only ignorant, rather than disingenuous. Blind people have a variety of visual impairments and varying levels of functional vision. I have enough functional vision to read the Kindle with low vision glasses for short periods of time. Supplementing this with text-to-speech makes the Kindle pretty damn near the ideal accessible reading device for me. So dismissing the accessibility implications with a glib rephrasing of his conversation with the NFB is both misleading and unjustified. I do not want to be stuck going back and forth between devices for the profoundly blind and my tiny-fonted iPod for the rest of my life.
I have posted this discussion in more detail on my blog:
http://www.timobrienphotos.com/2009/02/blount-bluntly-dismisses-the-blind-on-the-nytimes-op-ed-page/.
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Good to know, good to know. Not that anyone would ever want to remove DRM. :)
Though I don't understand why shortcovers and kindle do not offer the same flexibility with font and color schemes on all their devices.
the stanza is definitely the most accessible e-book reader on the iPHone. I have been reviewing them for accessibility on my blog (iPhone Access. What Stanza lacks is content. The Kindle and Shortcover bookstores have more current material.
I am an early Audible subscriber. I still have a legacy plan! As happy as I am with Audible, the Audible catalog is incomplete. There are tons of books that I want to read which have not been recorded. The Kindle could give me access to them with TTs.
I am legally blind, so usually reading on my iPod Touch is out of the question. I just tested the Kindle app out with my wife's Kindle account. I can actually read the largest font settings with my reading glasses. I don't think I could read on the iPhone for a long time, but I certainly could do it for short periods of time. I have to hold the device up to my face, which is uncomfortable, but I have to do that with anything I read. The Touch is lighter than any of Neal Stephenson's books, even the paperbacks.
I'ld love to try them, but rhey don not yet fit my bucget.
Being visually impaired, I can't use a laptop because I can't get close enough to the screen. The keyboard gets in the way. Having a detachable monitor is what I have always been looking for. Now I just need to find a way to hold it close to my face while I type.
People with disabilities can use specialized devices, which are made available only by prescription to people with a qualifying disability, that play copies of works produced under an exception to the U.S. copyright statute (17 USC 121). Kindle 2, being available to all, does not meet this requirement.
Have you ever used devices dedicated to the blind. They are expensive, ugly, complicated to use and do not offer what the Kindle does.
Being legally blind with functional vision, I like to read, but I cannot for long periods of time. With the Kindle 1's largest font, that eye strain is reduced somewhat. The Kindle 2 is the next step towards my ideal reading device, one that allows me to go back and forth with large print and TTS.
Losing TTS (Amazon's discussion is likely tantamount to this) will kill this move forward for accessible, aesthetic and feature rich device for the partially sighted.
See One Small Step Back for Amazon, One Giant Leap Backwards for Access for more of my rantings on this subject.
Skipping over the already well-discussed audio rights issue, let me rant about access for the visually impaired. Blount's arguments in the Times' OIp-Ed in regards to the lack of accessibility of the Kindle 2 to the blind were flawed. I hope that he is only ignorant, rather than disingenuous. Blind people have a variety of visual impairments and varying levels of functional vision. I have enough functional vision to read the Kindle with low vision glasses for short periods of time. Supplementing this with text-to-speech makes the Kindle pretty damn near the ideal accessible reading device for me. So dismissing the accessibility implications with a glib rephrasing of his conversation with the NFB is both misleading and unjustified. I do not want to be stuck going back and forth between devices for the profoundly blind and my tiny-fonted iPod for the rest of my life. I have posted this discussion in more detail on my blog: http://www.timobrienphotos.com/2009/02/blount-bluntly-dismisses-the-blind-on-the-nytimes-op-ed-page/.