SlashGear Japan
By all accounts, the Amazon Kindle DX has been wildly successful for Amazon.com. The eReader has sparked a gob of new competing products and is selling very well around the world. There was a push by some to get the Kindle DX into universities for use instead of textbooks.
The National Federation for the Blind is supporting the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Syracuse University decisions to not use the Kindle DX for electronic textbooks. The reason the Federation supports the decision is that the Kindle DX has menus that are not accessible by the blind.
Both universities say that they will not purchase any more of the Kindle DX devices because of the devices are inaccessible to the blind. I don’t get that; normal textbooks are inaccessible to the blind too. Why block students that can see from using something that would be much more convenient than normal textbooks.
One Response to “Kindle DX not for suitable for the blind says advocacy group”
“I don’t get that; normal textbooks are inaccessible to the blind too.”
I don’t believe that, just because hardcopy textbooks were not accessible, it makes it ok for future evolutions of text delivery to also not be accessbile.
The technology, capability and awareness is well and truely evident in this day and age. Pushes for web accessibility is well and truely underway. So why not push this onto future devices?
One could argue the costs involved, but for something as popular as the Kindle, creating an accessible version of the Kindle shouldn’t be too far out of reach.
And I’m sure there are plenty of gadget crazed people out there with disabilities who don’t want to be left behind simply because companies decided not to cater for them.
And going by what’s said in the article, it sounds like the Kindle was partially inaccessible (i.e. they only said the menus were not accessible, not the device as a whole). If that was the case, then some minor updates to the accessibility portion of the device should set her right. Shouldn’t that be worked on and sorted out before distributing thousands of Kindles across universities?
Neutral