Hi Jess, It is also worth remembering that it is not only Blind people who are being affected by such measures. Dyslexics and other print disabled people will also have issues with this as I believe many of them use speech to access these books. I do not remember the details, but I think there was a lot of controversy at some point in the recent past regarding exactly this issue. From what i remember, Amazon backed down under pressure from the Author's Guild who argued that the ability to decide whether or not their books would be accessible to Screen Readers and Text-To-Speech engines should reside with them as to do otherwise could infringe their rights. Personally, and accuse me of cynicism if you like, I believe that the Guild, like are other commercially minded organisations and individuals, are only interested in the bottom line - making namely, a profit.
A petition sounds like a reasonable first step, and I would be happy to sign it but I think something more needs to be done - something more emphatic. I wonder if it would be possible to liaise with and join together all the organisations for the Blind - or at least as many as we can convince to forget their petty squabbles. I am not just talking about the American organisations, but ideally an international movement, including as many nations as possible. It would also be helpful if we could get other organisations for print disabled people as well as interested individuals (especially authors like JK Rowling Ian Rankin and Stephen Fry. What do people think? I have no idea how to go about this except for sending E-Mails to see if there are any interested parties. Mr. Fry comes across as a very honest and caring person. From reading his blog, I think he is currently in the middle of writing a new book, but perhaps we could get in touch with him and others via their agents or publishers. I think too that JK Rowling might be a good person to approach as I seem to remember hearing that she stipulated that the Braille and print editions of "Harry Potter And The Half Blood Prince" should be released simultaneously. Also, I think Mr. Rankin, has appeared on "In Touch", which is a radio show for the Blind here in the UK and has a Blind child at University. Just a thought. I'm sure others will have better ideas. TC James On 1 Feb 2010, at 12:49, Jess wrote: > First, a question. > How many people like to read books? I know I do. How many people were > overjoyed that entire text books were going to be put online? I was. However, > a lot of EBooks cannot be read by any screen reader we have today. Why? > Simply put, the text of the book is contained within an OCR image, and there > is a special reader required to read them. These are not your standard PDF > files, and the books are protected by DRM, so there is no way to extract the > contents into programs like text edit. > As a book worm, I tried out the Kindle app for the IPhone, and was delighted > to find that a book that I wanted to read was available on the Kindle store. > However, my joy turned to bitter disappointment when I realized that while I > could navigate the book's table of contents, cover, and chapters to an > extent, the text was completely inaccessible. Furthermore, my text books for > my classes were not usable. Ladies and gentlemen, I fear that unless we as > blind consumers stand up, and demand that these publishers put their text > books into standard native file formats, such as pdf or doc, we will lose a > lot of access to books, and our chances to succeed at college will be > severely diminished. So, anyone have any thoughts of what to do? > I thought about starting a petition to ask Amazon to require their publishers > to make their books usable, but figured that I would be a laughing stock for > doing so, as most publishers probably wouldn't have the time to read, much > less consider what I was asking for. > My point is, as long as E texts get more and more graphical, our chances to > read will be greatly impaired, and as more and more books become exclusively > online, we will lose access to the latest editions of books altogether. > Thoughts, anyone? > You may also skype me at pianomagic88 > > Jes > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "MacVisionaries" group. > To post to this group, send email to macvisionar...@googlegroups.com. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MacVisionaries" group. To post to this group, send email to macvisionar...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en.
