[gui-talk] Fwd: Article: Preparing to Sell E-Books, Google Takes on Amazon

[James Pepper]

Publishers can lay out books in PDF format to be accessible to the blind.
It is costly to do this, it is a matter of reformatting the entire book.  Of
course the DAISY books also have to be reformatted.  The transitions between
print and these formats is considerable and it is not as easy as it sounds
because in many cases the content has to be remade.  This is because Adobe
InDesign is a disaster area for the blind, in my opinion and it inherently
destroys text so it cannot be made accessible.  That is because its concern
is for the visual layout and not for accessibility.

But accessibility is viable and can be made into any PDF file.  So I do not
understand all this hype over Kindle when the technology exists to just
download a book onto your computer and read it, with the digital rights
associated with the book.  All you need is Adobe Reader, which is a free
download from Adobe.com.  And you can do this in 36 languages.  So why all
the fuss and why is this not getting done!

James G. Pepper