[Mn-parents] Amazon/Kindle Protest in Seattle

Tue Dec 18 14:48:45 UTC 2012

Thank you Steve for this write-up.  I sent it on to parents and students
who may not be paying attention or receive NFB updates.
Char

-----Original Message-----
From: Mn-parents [mailto:mn-parents-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Steve
Jacobson
Sent: Monday, December 17, 2012 9:35 PM
To: Minnesota Parents of Blind Children; NFB of Minnesota News List
Subject: [Mn-parents] Amazon/Kindle Protest in Seattle

Over the past month or so, you have likely read of the effort of
Amazon.com to promode the use of Kindle devices and Amazon's Whispercast
system to school systems.  Among other things, they are making
Kindle devices available to K-12 schools free of charge.  The Whispercast
system allows the distribution of Kindle materials to other devices in the
classroom.  As you may recall, there was hope early on that
Kindles would be made fully accessible to blind persons since early
versions did allow most books to be read with speech.  However, apparent
pressure from publishers and a general lack of interest on the part
of the Kindle's developers has resulted
in very little progress.  Even if such devices are made available to
schools free, it is a violation of a number of federal laws for schools to
use devices that are not accessible when other similar accessible
devices exist.  E-books in the Kindle format can be read on the I Pad, and
some attention has been drawn to that fact indicating that the system is
somewhat accessible.  However, the "apps" that read kindle
e-books on the
I Pad do not provide full access to the power available to sighted kids
using the same apps.  even though the ability to read a book using speech
is provided, the navigation is very basic.  One can start, stop,
and pause reading.  There is no provision for the blind person to be able
to, for example, navigate to a specific page or to see how a word is
spelled.  Since text is spoken by a Kindle voice and not
by VoiceOver, braille displays cannot see the text even though other I pad
functions work well with braille displays.  A blind user does not have the
ability to look up a specific word in the text as can sighted
kids using the same app.  In short, Kindle reading devices are not
accessible, and software that might be supported on other devices provides
only inferior accessibility.

For these reasons, Jennifer Dunnam, Mike Sahyun and I journeyed to
Seattle, Washington to join over one hundred people from around the United
States on December 12 to protest AMAZON.COM's pushing
this system aggressively into the country's school
systems without making these devices accessible.  It was approximately
forty degrees and at times it rained fairly hard as we carried signs and
brought our message to Amazon.COM.  During
our two-hour protest, a number of speakers addressed messages to
AMAZON.COM.  A particularly touching message came from Michael Hingson,
the man who escaped from the World Trade Center with his
dog guide when those towers were attacked on September 11.  He wrote a
book about his experience called "Thunder Dog," and noted how frustrating
and even ironic it is to be an author of a book
published on Kindle devices, but because he is bline, he cannot read the
very book he published on the Kindle.  We also heard from former Governor
Paterson of New York, George Kirscher who is known as
the father of access to electronic books for blind persons, Dr.
Marc Maurer, Mark Riccobono, and a number of other speakers.  Letters
prepared by persons throughout the country were hand delivered to the
Amazon.COM building as well.  Naturally, there was an
assortment of cheers, and an interesting presentation of "The Grinch who
stole e-books".  Are there any guesses as to whom the term "grinch" was
applied?

Time will tell as to what affect our protest will have.  At the very
least, AMAZON.COM saw hard-working and dedicated blind persons who are
being hurt by their corporate decisions marching in front of their
building in a chilling rain.  They would have seen the looks of
determination on our faces and our resolve to see their actions changed as
even the rain did not detour us.  There were promises of additional
accessibility made several days before our protest, but these promises are
lacking in details and appear to be a year into the future at least.
Would even these promises have come without our protest?  Will
something change?  The law and certainly the spirit of the law is pretty
clear on this.  I believe AMAZON.COM and the Kindle will have to change if
they wish to be in the educational market in the long run.
Nevertheless, it could be that some of us may need to
make another trip or two to Seattle to help them understand more quickly
than they are likely to on their own.

Here is a link to one news story about our protest:

http://www.kplu.org/post/blind-protesters-march-amazon-over-kindle-accessi
bility

We will certainly continue to watch this issue closely and do what must be
done to get this pattern of exclusion changed.

Best regards,

Steve Jacobson

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