Comments on: Row Brewing Over E-Book Speech Function Removal

By: Richard Morton - Accessible Web Design

Richard Morton - Accessible Web Design — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 18:56:56 +0000

Although I can see the arguments from both sides, it seems foolish for publishers to object the text to speech facilities. They may well have a legitimate case but the negative publicity generated will be bad for everyone.
As has been pointed out, synthesised speech is not of the same quality as say Stephen Fry’s voice and is unlikely to be so in the near future.
My money is on the publishers giving in eventually and probably trying to claim the moral highground.

By: Claude Almansi

Claude Almansi — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 20:44:35 +0000

The Reading Rights Coalition has started an online petition aimed at the US Authors’ Guild, “Allow Everyone Access to E-books”:

“When Amazon released the Kindle 2 electronic book reader on February 9, 2009, the company announced that the device would read e-books aloud using text-to-speech technology. Under pressure from the Authors Guild, Amazon has announced that it will give authors and publishers the ability to disable the text-to-speech function on any or all of their e-books available for the Kindle 2.

The Reading Rights Coalition, which represents people who cannot read print, will protest the threatened removal of the text-to-speech function from e-books for the Amazon Kindle 2 outside the Authors Guild headquarters in New York City at 31 East 32nd Street on April 7, 2009, from noon to 2:00 p.m. The coalition includes the organizations that represent the blind, people with dyslexia, people with learning or processing issues, seniors losing vision, people with spinal cord injuries, people recovering from strokes, and many others for whom the addition of text-to-speech on the Kindle 2 promised for the first time easy, mainstream access to over 245,000 books.”

It can be signed at:

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/We-Want-To-Read

By: Dave Garside

Dave Garside — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 16:19:09 +0000

When a paper book is purchased a royalty is paid and it is not an issue wether the book is read by sight, a second person out loud or by mechanical means.
With an e-book the royalty has also been paid.
Are the objections because, those who prefer an audio copy are being ripped off by paying a higher royalty fee?
Or is it not a royalty but a profit issue.

Either way it forces the blind to pay extra for a service that could be supplied at the same price as to a sighted customer and that is a discrimination issue.