Promise falls short for Amazon's Kindle

Amazon's new Kindle 2 offers blind and visually impaired people the potential to read without limits for the first time in history. But, sadly, that possibility still remains out of reach.

I was initially excited to hear about the new Kindle and its text-to-speech capabilities. Unfortunately, Amazon has released this excellent bookreader technology without designing it so that people with vision loss can independently access the text-to-speech function.

And to compound the problem, the Authors Guild of America wrongly insists that this function on Kindle 2 violates copyright laws by enabling people to listen to books without paying for audio rights. Under pressure from the guild, Amazon has agreed to give publishers the ability to disable text-to-speech on any of their e-books available for Kindle 2, and at least one publisher has announced its intention to do so.

When it heard of the desire of people with disabilities to use the text-to-speech option, the Authors Guild offered insulting and unequal alternatives. It proposed a registration system for readers with disabilities, an idea that is unmanageable, burdensome, and carries the taint of stigma and segregation. Similarly, the guild’s suggestion to charge extra to enable the speech function amounts to little more than a disability tax.

The authors and publishers’ arguments do not make sense from either a fair compensation or copyright viewpoint. The decision to turn off text-to-speech shuts out a significant new market of people who have not bought traditional books because they cannot read them, but would willingly pay for accessible copies. There are more than 20 million Americans who report experiencing significant vision loss, and many others who would benefit from text-to-speech, such as people with dyslexia and people with physical disabilities, to name just a few.

Furthermore, the Authors Guild’s concerns are not valid under current copyright law. Text-to-speech used for private reading is no different from reading a book out loud in the privacy of a home or office. Publishers and authors’ fears that text-to-speech will replace audio books (and the revenue generated from audio book sales) are irrelevant to copyright discussions and seems unfounded. There’s no substitute for listening to a professional narrator or an author read your favorite book — if that book is even one of the small percentage of publications made into an unabridged audio book.

Those of us with print disabilities have waited a long time for a world where books and media are portable, easy to purchase, and available at the same time as print formats. Kindle 2 puts that world within our reach for the first time. Amazon must remove the barriers that prevent us from using the features of the device, and publishers and authors must come to see that text-to-speech is simply an alternative means of access to print.

If you restrict our access to Kindle 2, everyone loses.

Paul Schroeder is vice president of programs and policy at the American Foundation for the Blind. He can be reached at pmproj [at] progressive [dot] org.