[Blindtlk] Amazon's acquisition of text-to-speech company IVONAcould help it battle Siri and lawsuits

[Chris Nusbaum]

There might be a speech synthesizer in the Kindles, but that alone doesn't make it accessible. They had TTS in the older Kindles, but it only read the books. Who is to say they wouldn't do the same thing with Ivona voices, especially knowing Amazon's history as it relates to accessibility or lack thereof?

Chris

-----Original Message-----
From: blindtlk [mailto:blindtlk-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Lloyd Rasmussen
Sent: Sunday, January 27, 2013 3:25 PM
To: Blind Talk Mailing List
Subject: Re: [Blindtlk] Amazon's acquisition of text-to-speech company IVONAcould help it battle Siri and lawsuits

Amazon is bragging about their Kindle features with Ivona speech.  I expect we will see some improvements in the next few months.  But she doesn't realize that speech recognition is a whole different kettle of fish; I don't think that Ivona works on speech recognition at all.

-----Original Message-----
From: Mike Freeman
Sent: Sunday, January 27, 2013 2:45 PM
To: 'Blind Talk Mailing List'
Subject: Re: [Blindtlk] Amazon's acquisition of text-to-speech company IVONAcould help it battle Siri and lawsuits

Just shows you Ms. Hazard truly doesn't understand the accessibility issue, let alone get our name correct.

Part of our overall problem is that very few people truly understand what accessibility is for the blind.

Mike


-----Original Message-----
From: blindtlk [mailto:blindtlk-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Daniel Garcia
Sent: Sunday, January 27, 2013 11:34 AM
To: blindtlk at nfbnet.org
Subject: [Blindtlk] Amazon's acquisition of text-to-speech company IVONA could help it battle Siri and lawsuits

Amazon’s acquisition of text-to-speech company IVONA could help it battle Siri  and lawsuits

http://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/amazon-acquisition-text-speech-company-1449
22940.html

By Laura Hazard Owen Thu, 24 Jan, 2013 9:49 AM EST

In a move that could assist vision-impaired users and potentially aid smartphone development, Amazon has acquired

text-to-speech and voice recognition company IVONA Software for an undisclosed sum.
Amazon already uses IVONA technology on the Kindle Fire, using the software to, for example, read user actions aloud or

help navigate the touchscreen. Amazon might now integrate some of these features into its e-readers. (The Kindle

Paperwhite lacks the experimental text-to-speech feature that was available on the older Kindle Touch.) Over the past few years, various advocacy organizations for blind people — most prominently, the National Federation for

the Blind — have sued or protested against Amazon as it attempts to sign deals with school districts and universities to

bring Kindle devices into classrooms. The organizations argue that Kindle e-readers and ebooks are inaccessible to blind

students and are thus prohibited from use in public schools by federal law.
More recently, advocacy by the National

Federation for the Blind may have been a factor in the scuttling of a multi-million dollar deal between Amazon and the

U.S. State Department to provide Kindles to overseas programs. If Amazon is able to integrate text-to-speech technology

into more of its devices, the company might be able to avoid some of these actions.
Of course, IVONA’s technology could also help Amazon create a competitor to Apple’s Siri voice-recognition technology.

(Rumors that Amazon is working on a smartphone have been making their way around the internet for awhile.) It seems

more likely, though, that the primary driver of this acquisition is Amazon’s desire to avoid future lawsuits — and to get

its Kindles into more hands worldwide.


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