The New Kindle DX is Still Not Accessible to the Blind

Last Wednesday, the New York Times reported that Amazon was announcing that they were coming out with yet another Kindle. This new Kindle, called the Kindle DX has a screen about 2 and 1/2 times bigger than the regular Kindle, and is designed to make reading text books and news papers easier. The device will still come with the TTS that is on the Kindle II, which is still subject to publisher approval, but there is no increased accessibility for the blind, so this Kindle will still not be accessible. The question is though, how important is it that the Kindle be accessible to the blind.

I decided to write about this issue as a response to an article I read. In the piece, the author is rightly frustrated that Amazon has not made the Kindle fully accessible even though they already have TTS available on the device. This author's main complaint is that this new Kindle DX could make the life of blind students less stressful because Amazon has made agreements with at least three text book publishers, and if a student could just download their text book onto the Kindle, then they wouldn't have to worry about having their books when class starts each term.

I can say from experience that having text books ready for class when I was in college was a little more stressful than it needed to be. If Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic or RFB&D didn't have my book, than I had to rely on my school's disability services to get the book read in time for me to read it for class. To make matters nor frustrating, if the book was read by the school, it wasn't as professional and sometimes they didn't label pages or headings. But this was back when blind students still had to rely on cassette tapes for their books. We've graduated now to CD's and digital books in DAISY format which can be downloaded onto a portable device like the Victor Reader Stream, or to any computer. Students also have other sources to rely on like BookShare.Org to get their text books if RFB&D doesn't have the book. This says to me that maybe the Kindle being fully accessible to the blind may not be as important as everyone thinks. Plus, the Victor Reader and other portable devices sometimes cost less than the Kindle, and if the books are downloaded from Book share or RFB&D, the cost is either nothing or very little, where as with the Kindle the cost may be as much as the print edition.

I do believe that the Kindle, and all mainstream devices should be accessible, because it not only benefits the disabled. That being said, I am not sure that the blind community should be as outraged as they are since there are great alternatives for getting books in braille or in audio format. I do hope that the blind community will still continue to demand from Amazon that they make their device accessible to all, and maybe soon Amazon will step up to the plate and do the right thing.

To read more about the Kindle and the controversy surrounding the built in TTS please read:
The Kindle 2 Controversy: Why the Author's Guild Wants to Prevent Progress

If you're blind, how would owning a Kindle change how and what you read? What could organizations like Book Share and RFB&D do to make their services as good as Amazon's?