My thoughts on an accessible ebook reader
Recently, it was announced that there will soon be a free, accessible e-reading device designed by Kurzweil Education, which already produces scanning and OCR software for the blind. Many of the blind people I speak to regularly on twitter are excited about the prospect, myself included. After all, I have written before about my feelings about providing accessible ebooks for those of us who want them.
I’m cautiously optimistic about this soon-to-be released ebook reader. I like that I can use it on my computer and on my mobile devices. I like that it will work with pdf and epub files, and mostly I like that it is free.
I do have a few concerns, however. According to the Publishers’ Weekly article I linked to earlier, people will be able to purchase ebooks from the e-reader’s affiliated store. But I hope that, if I want to take advantage of the programs already offered by Fictionwise or Books on Board, I will be able to do this and still have the software working. I also question the need for some of the features the PW article mentioned. Apparently, this ebook reader will read plays with different TTS voices for each of the roles. Aside from students, who is actually going to use this feature? Wouldn’t the coders’ times have been better spent making sure the device could, oh, I don’t know, read as many varieties of formats as possible rather than giving us silly features that we can honestly live without?
Also, the article states that this reader, which doesn’t have a name, will be useful for sighted as well as blind people. I wonder if this is true, and I also wonder who the larger number of downloaders will be.
So, in the end, I’m excited about the November release of this software. I don’t expect it to be the miracle that the blind have been waiting for, but it’s definitely a step in the right direction, and I hope that it will be as awesome as advertised.
I hope it turns out to be worthwhile! I have considered e-book readers, but so far they are not really available in Canada, so I try to ignore most of the hype…
I suspect that having different voices for different roles is a nice novelty thing that some may find intriguing enough to give the reader a try and, by extension, cause more books to be purchased. I actually think Ray has the right idea here: give products designed for blind people a wider appeal. Wider appeal = more units = more units moved = lower costs for all of us. So what if this *isn’t* the right hook to get the wider public interested? It’s a great attempt, and if it ultimately means more reading and information choices for us, so much the better. I see from the press release that it will support PDF and Epub; whether it also will support protected content is anyone’s guess, though is probably down to licensing and DRM than it is to programming time.
BTW, it’s KNFB Reading Technologies (or Kurzweil Technologies), not Kurzweil Educational, which is involved in this. Kurzweil Educational is an entirely different company.
Buddy,
Ahh, I was confused about the company responsible. I will fix that in a few minutes.
Yeah, if the book reader doesn’t support protected content, it’s still not going to be the most useful thing in the world, so I hope that it does.
I just wish the blindness community didn’t have to keep inventing the goddamned wheel. If Amazon would just make the kindle accessible, this wouldn’t be ann issue. But I’m not bitter, nope, not me.
I’ve found your site on yahoo by mistake but I’m glad i did .