Kindle Textbook Deployment Faces Stiff Challenges

The Kindle textbook deployment faces an uphill battle as the
National Federation of the Blind and American Council of the Blind filed a discrimination Law Suit against Arizona State University Amazon Kindle DX Pilot Program claiming that it discriminates against the blind.

What is the problem?

Transforming digital text to  audio and braile is relatively simple, but at present, the Amazon Kindle DX is not completely configued to do so in such a way  to accomodate blind readers.

Yes, the device currently translate digital book into Audio, but one can only activate the feature via an on-screen menu that’s not accessible to the blind.

“It is unfair to the blind to deploy such a huge project and the blind do not have access to it.” said one blind student.

“Software exists that can use audio or keyboard shortcuts to make menus available,” says Danielson of the federation for the blind, but Amazon has chosen not to incorporate that technology into the Kindle at this point.

By adopting the device as-is, Arizona State and the other universities are violating the Americans With Disabilities Act and the Rehabilitation Act of 1973.

“Given the highly-advanced technology involved, there is no good reason that Amazon’s Kindle DX device should be inaccessible to blind students,” Marc Maurer, the federation’s president, said in a prepared statement.

“Amazon could have used the same text-to-speech technology that reads e-books on the device aloud to make its menus accessible to the blind, but it chose not to do so.

Thus far Amazon is silent on the issue. Let us know your thoughts.

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If you enjoy this article, you may also like:

• What Kindle Textbooks Could Mean For Both The Amazon Kindle And The Student.
• Amazon to Launch New version of Amazon Kindle and Move Kindle Into The Textbook Arena!
• Kindle DX… does Size really matter?
• Kindle-Edition Textbooks To Be Published By Princeton University Press

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Top Six "Issues" That Kindle Must Address

Having listened to and read many of the kindle discussion, I have identified six issues that I think Kindle will need to address if it is going to live up to its much “hyped” expectations.

1. “Next page” and “Previous Page” buttons constantly gets in the way and cause inadvertent turning of the book pages. This is very annoying and must be addressed quickly. If Kindle is going to do for books what Ipod did for music, this is a must fix.

2. Wireless Access only in Whispernet “hot” areas. If not in one of these areas, you must
download books, magazines, and Newspapers via computer. Not good at all. The number of”hot” areas must quickly increase to make it worth the price. International wireless
accessibility must be addressed as well.

3. Kindle Books may be a bit pricey compared to a lot of paperback versions. If you are willing to wait, you may be able to march down to the local book store and find the same books being offered at the Kindle store at the “So called” discount price, for less. Of course, these are the paper back versions. But then again, the difference may be justifiable by the fact that Kindle offers the convenience of accessing these books anywhere and at anytime. Plus,the ability to have 200 titles at your fingertips in one small package. Now that’s cool.

4. Because the books you buy at the Kindle store are account specific, you cannot loan a book you’ve already read to a friend. Certainly, it would be nice to be able to do the opposite, since, it is your book that you bought with your money. You should be able to do whatever you want with it.

5. Limited ability to sort or arrange the books you already read in the library. Once you read a book, you may have to remove it to make place for another if you need space. However, you are not able to archive the titles of the book for future reference. Once deleted, it is all gone. I think that you should at least be able to archive the titles of each book, since the titles themselves does not use up that much space.

6. Very limited ability to display PDF files. In experimental phase. Not sure how long this will be, but is definitely a problem that needs to be addressed very quickly while the Kindle concept is “hot.” You really don’t want people to forget about Kindle when dealing with PDF formatted documents since most documents are in PDF format. Not sure why this issue was not address prior to the Kindle release.

so there you have it. Six very important, among other, that immediately hops to mind when assessing Kindle. Issues that must be address if Kindle is going to become the electronic reading device that it is expected to become.