Multimedia Accessibility

Time and again, the Author's Guild has shown itself to be the epitome of a venal special interest group, the kind of grasping, foolish posturers that make the public cynically assume that the profession it represents is a racket, not a trade. This is, after all, the same gang of weirdos who opposed the used book trade going online. I think there's plenty not to like about the Kindle -- the DRM, the proprietary file format, both imposed on authors and publishers even if they don't want it -- and about Amazon's real audiobook section, Audible (the DRM -- again, imposed on authors and publishers even if they'd prefer not to use it). But if there's one thing Amazon has demonstrated, it's that it plans on selling several bazillion metric tons of audiobooks. They control something like 90 percent of the market. To accuse them of setting out to destroy it just doesn't pass the giggle-test.

Alex Helmick and the Guru check out the hot new ebook, the Amazon Kindle 2... but nothing on controversy about TTS, Authors' Guild, blind people's reactions to AG and Amazon caving in to AG. Nothing about DRM either.

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

Sadly, the Authors Guild does not support equal access for us. The Guild has told us that to read your books with text-to-speech we must either submit to a burdensome special registration system and prove our disabilities -- or pay extra. The Guild's position is outrageous and discriminates against the millions of people with print disabilities who are eager to be your readers and customers.

And here is a powerful statement from Carrie Russel, Director Program on Public Access to Information, ALA Office for Information Technology Policy "It is hard to know what is worse - Amazon cowtowing to the Authors Guild's request to remove the text to speech function or the Authors Guild seeking to squeeze every penny they can from the visually impaired who are already paying for the Kindle books. Amazon did not have to cave - there was no license they had agreed to with the Authors Guild to remove the speech function that would have expanded rights to private reading. Shame on the Authors Guild for being greedy and downright mean to the visually impaired."

According to a copy of the suit, Discovery charges that Amazon violated its patent for Electronic Book Security and Copyright Protection System. The patent, U.S. 7,298,851, was issued to Discovery Communications by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on Nov. 20, 2007, per the lawsuit filing (PDF). It was initially filed in 1999.

But while we were all running our mouths about the plausibility of the singularity emerging from Amazon's text-to-speech R&D, a much juicier issue was escaping our notice: it is technically possible for Amazon to switch off the text-to-speech feature for some or all books. That's a hell of a thing, isn't it? Now that Amazon has agreed with the Authors Guild that text-to-speech will only be switched on for authors who sign a contract permitting it, we should all be goggling in amazement at the idea that this can be accomplished. Neither of these should inspire confidence in the Kindle as a long-term device. Dropping $359 (£251) on a device whose features are subject to the outcomes of ongoing negotiations to which you are not a party is, frankly, nuts.

Amazon's Kindle, the first eBook reader that has really started to catch on with the public, deals almost exclusively with eBooks that have DRM. According to Ian Fried, the vice president of Amazon Kindle, customers don't seem to mind: "We've had very few if any customer responses that the choice we made with DRM was a problem." But DRM could become a problem if the Kindle goes bust - then all those people who bought Kindle eBooks with DRM will have no way to read them because no other device can open the files. Beyond that, not everyone agrees that DRM is a good business strategy. Publishing consultant Michael Shatzkin says it's tough to make the case that file-sharing reduces sales. He cites science fiction writer Cory Doctorow who, he says, "does the best he can to give away as much of his content as possible." And by giving it away, Shatzkin says, Doctorow's sales have skyrocketed.

As some of you may already know, this week we received a DMCA take-down notice from Amazon requesting the removal of the tool kindlepid.py and instructions associated with it. Although we never hosted this tool (contrary to their claim), nor believe that this tool is used to remove technological measures (contrary to their claim), we decided, due to the vagueness of the DMCA law and our intention to remain in good relation with Amazon, to voluntarily follow their request and remove links and detailed instructions related to it.

The author of the software in question, titled Kindlepid.py, is listed as Igor Skochinsky, a hardware hacker who performed a remarkable analysis of the Kindle and described in December 2007 how he was able to gain access to the device. It's unclear why Amazon waited so long to respond with a legal threat, and why the company targeted MobileRead.com: Skochinsky's original blog post about Kindlepid.py is dated December 2007, and the copy of the Kindlepid.py software hosted at the Googlepages.com Web-page posting site is still available for download at http://skochinsky.googlepages.com/azw-0.2.zip

ICART's mission is to design and advocate for accessibility features to be included as radio broadcasting accelerates the global transition to digital transmission. As we like to say: "Accessible design is good universal design"

In this page, we will collect all the information aggregated about video accessibility features for the Web. This includes: 1. a list of video accessibility requirements 2. a list of existing video accessibility formats 3. a list of required and actual existing software for video accessibility 4. proposed accessibility formats for the future.

To add captions or subtitles to one of your videos, you'll need to have files with the captions/subtitles in them. (...) We currently support a simple subtitle format that is compatible with the formats known as SubViewer (*.SUB) and SubRip (*.SRT).

To be accessible the PDF form must be created as a tagged document. The goal of the form design is to ensure that all the field elements are placed in the logical structure within the tag tree and have appropriate text descriptors using tool tips or captions.

The Zenbox Project's main objective is to provide easy access to a Linux-based graphical desktop environment to blind users of notebooks.

An on-line petition called "a bridge for everyone" organized by Roberto Scano, an Italian accessibility expert, urges the postponement of the inauguration of the bridge until the structure will be accessible by all citizens. Mr. Scano remarks: "How can the Government inaugurate a publicly funded structure that does not allow the possibility for everyone to use? As it stands now the bridge is limp."