The Department of Justice (pardon the oxymoron) apparently has “threatened several universities with legal action because they took part in an experimental program to allow students to use the Amazon Kindle for textbooks”.
Instead of, say, investigating voter intimidation by the New Black Panther Party.
This action was apparently prompted by the fact that the Kindle, in its most penultimate incarnations, is not friendly to the blind. And that’s no joke — although Kindle does have a text-to-speech function, the side buttons on my Kindle 2 (and I presume the original Kindle 1 and the Kindle DX) that actually do pagination and handle other functions don’t have any audio feedback to tell you what they do (or what they are doing when you push them). I can’t really imagine a blind user reading from a Kindle with much success.
So, all this being said, did evil Amazon refuse to make the Kindle more accessible to the blind? Not hardly:
One obvious solution to the problem, of course, was to fix the Kindle. Early on, Amazon told federation officials it would apply text-to-speech technology to the Kindle’s menu and function keys. And sure enough, last week the company announced a new generation of Kindles that are fully accessible to the blind. While the Justice Department was making demands, and [Civil Rights Division chief Thomas] Perez was making speeches, the market was working.
The market always works better than government because the market knows it has to be responsive to its customers. The government doesn’t give a damn because it knows it won’t be challenged.
Or won’t it? The revolution is coming, comrades. It just won’t be the one the Panthers are thinking about.
I am speechless. textbooks do not read aloud to blind students either. How is a blind person penalized here?
Why must the Kindle be usable for the handicapped? Blind people cannot play many video games.
Next we will find a right to drive for blind people.
Do art museums have to offer accomodations for the visually impaired?
I am so confused. Our government does stupid stuff, but this is just stupid. But then I read last week that a judge insists that lifeguard chairs in Florida must be handicapped accessible.
“Next we will find a right to drive for blind people.”
Ever notice the braille on the buttons of drive-up ATMs?
Do art museums have to offer accomodations for the visually impaired?
Yes, they do. And the Justice Department’s “equal access” people want to mandate “audio description” for movies, too.
(Which is actually not QUITE as stupid an idea as it first sounds- if you research what they’re considering- but fercryinoutloud, MANDATES?)
It might be helpful to actually read information provided by the National Federation of the Blind on why they are pursuing this. Further, it’s such a puerile stance to assume that, since the blind are advocating and/or suing for one accommodation (which, again, is not unreasonable one you understand their position), that they are then going to go out of their way to sue every item that is accessible only by sight. How tiresome you little bloggers are, not actually taking the time to fully understand the issue, but hear Rush bloviate about something for a minute and then post a thoughtless, emetic screed on something about which you have very little understanding.
My, you shore do talk purty, miss. And I’ll bet I have a better understanding of the situation than you do, with your Perennially Indignant attitude. For your information, I don’t rely on Rush for my information, and I actually own a Kindle and find it to be a very useful tool. The issue at hand, however, is not whether or not the Kindle is blind-accessible, but rather that our overbearing government finds a problem where one does not exist, and threatens legal action where the issue has already been dealt with.
The point you have missed in reading the above is that a growing segment of the US citizenry is getting sick and tired of special interests running our government and telling us what we can and cannot do. And apparently you are a special interest advocate with no interest in actually discussing the issue at hand — so kindly go hang.
All that I need to know to “understand the issue” is that the federal government, at the behest of a private advocacy group, blocked an EXPERIMENT that might have wound up saving a bunch of people a bunch of money soley because a (disabled) minority couldn’t participate YET.
Without giving the experimenters even a CHANCE to make any accommodation.
That isn’t improving access, it’s playing dog in the manger.
“It might be helpful to actually read information”
IRONY-METER-BROKEN-MUST-KILL-MORON!!!
Fiona, do you like anal sex? Cause it’s coming.