Reading Device Kindles a Controversy
By Deborah Kendrick
When Amazon first came out with the Kindle, a handheld
e-book reader, people who were blind or visually impaired paid little or no
attention. Then, on February 9th, the Kindle 2 was announced – and that,
as they say, was a whole new ballgame.
Kindle 2, similar in size and lighter in weight than a
typical paperback book, was designed like its predecessor to store electronic
books and enable the user to read them, advancing pages to simulate the
appearance of printed books of the paper and binding variety. But Kindle 2 also
has on board a text-to-speech capability, making it possible for those unable
to read the screen visually to hear it read aloud in a computerized male or
female voice. With a treasure trove of 260,000 books of every genre (available
for download at about $10 a book), newspapers, magazines, wireless access to
Wikipedia and more, Kindle 2 was clearly a product worthy of some attention.
Better still, for people who are blind, visually impaired
or who have learning disabilities or physical disabilities making the handling
of conventional tomes difficult or impossible, here was Amazon launching a
mainstream, affordable product at long last that could be accessible to all.
Then, the Authors Guild, a professional organization of
journalists and authors, jumped into the ring. Audio rights, said Authors Guild
president Roy Blount, Jr. in a New York Times op-ed piece, amounted to
25 percent of their profits, and a text-to-speech feature would enable people
to get audio without paying for it. Under pressure, Amazon began to back down,
saying maybe they’d just allow the text-to-speech to be available on
titles with a book-by-book author permission.
Outraged by this clear move toward segregation in the
marketplace, the National Federation of the Blind and 20-plus other
organizations representing veterans, seniors, people who are blind, people with
learning disabilities, and people with a host of physical or cognitive
disabilities that render the handling of print difficult, mobilized to protest
this act of exclusion, resulting in the Reading Rights Coalition. The group
launched an online petition, that has thus far garnered thousands of
signatures, and staged a peaceful demonstration on April 7th outside
the Authors Guild headquarters in New York City.
Will Amazon succumb to the pressure and enable the
text-to-speech on a book-by-book basis, thus segregating those with
print-related disabilities once again? Or will it recognize that it has
launched a product that could be accessible to everyone, with or without
disabilities, and thus claim a higher profit for everyone? The jury is still
out, but the real problem, it seems to me, is one of misinformation with regard
to what this technology does and does not do.
As is the case with so many inventions that benefit all
people today, the concept of talking books was originally conceived to fill a
need experienced only by people with disabilities. Thomas Edison invented the
phonograph record, initially, to create spoken-word recordings for blind
people. Out of that marvelous invention grew the National Library Service for
the Blind and Physically Handicapped, a division of the Library of Congress,
and its renowned talking books program.
In the 1980s, the concept of audio books – print
books recorded by professional actors and narrators – extended into the
commercial marketplace and, suddenly, professionals with long commutes,
stay-at-home parents with no time to sit and hold a book, and college students
wanting to listen to a classic while doing something else discovered the joy of
listening to the written word. The audio book industry has continued to grow
– most notably, perhaps, with the launch of Audible.com, an online service
that sells audio books that can be downloaded and played on a host of handheld
MP3 players. (The Kindle 2, incidentally, will play these books as well.) Only
a fraction of all books published are available in audio format, however, and
many of those are abridged versions of the original.
For people who are blind, or who have learning
disabilities or physical disabilities rendering the handling of conventional
print books difficult, the audio book industry has indeed been welcomed. Even
more so, however, has been the advent of text-to-speech technologies. Programs
that convert the printed word to a computerized voice are available on
computers, laptops, cell phones and a host of other devices – making these
devices accessible to those unable to see or comprehend the information
displayed on screens.
While this access has been a boon to education and
employment, it is an alternative or extension of the visual information –
not a separate medium. Listening to an audio book “performed” by a
professional narrator is one thing; authors should receive additional monetary
benefit when those products are purchased. But listening to a book through a
computerized voice is simply another way of accessing what is on the screen.
There is no performance. There is no additional production cost. The file
downloaded is one and the same, whether accessed via eyes or ears.
Given the choice, most customers – if listening is
their preferred mode of access – will opt to purchase an audio book (one
read by a human) rather than listen to a computerized voice generated by
text-to-speech capabilities. The difference offered by the Kindle 2 is that the
availability of books is made equal to all customers. Any book that can be
purchased and downloaded by a Kindle 2 customer who can read it on the screen
can also be purchased, downloaded and enjoyed by one who cannot read the
screen.
What the Authors Guild members fail to understand is that
accessibility to all is not only the right thing to do but also the most
profitable. If the millions of people with print-related disabilities can buy
any book, any time that Amazon adds to its constantly growing e-book collection
and read it via text-to-speech, more books will be sold. And, when those books
are available as bona fide audio books, read by human narrators and thus
creating a different product, everyone – with or without disabilities
– will pay extra for those products, and the authors will get their share.
Deborah Kendrick is a newspaper
columnist and senior features editor for AccessWorld. |
