[NABS-L] Students Reading Books From Learning Ally

[Kane Brolin]

Greetings.

A related question I would love to see answered:  Does Learning Ally
support the HumanWare Victor Reader Stratus12 DAISY MP3 player?

What Curtis discovered here, I find rather disturbing as
well.  I get it if Learning Ally has shifted its business focus more to those
who are dyslexic or who live with neurological problems that make them
print-disabled, somewhat de-emphasizing those of us who are primarily
or exclusively blind.  That subpopulation is a lot more numerous than
are the blind, at least in North America.  But it seems unnecessary to
drop the newest model of the Victor Reader Stream, a hugely popular
device, from that list of players for the blind that Learning Ally
supports.  After all, we would not be asking Learning Ally to reformat
its library to meet a new standard of player; we're only talking about
generating an access key to permit Stream 3.0 users to validate that
they are entitled to download Learning Ally DAISY audio books onto the
new device just as they would be entitled to do with their Stream 2.0.
Learning Ally's explanation to Curtis does not seem credible to me, at
least on the surface.

Alternatively, I suspect your frustration is driven by another
financial consideration.  If we were going to use our collective power
as blind student/consumers to lean on anybody, I think we would be
well served to lean on HumanWare more than on Learning Ally.
HumanWare is a for-profit organization, whereas Learning Ally is not.
Does HumanWare demand of content distributors such as Learning Ally some kind
of payment in order for Learning Ally to gain a rights management
privilege that would permit Stream 3.0 users who subscribe to Learning
Ally to have access to Learning Ally titles?  Maybe Learning Ally is
unwilling to pay what HumanWare would demand for the right to register
Stream 3.0 units. Let's investigate the
business case here and see who excluded whom from the party.

Even though I've not been enrolled in a university for 28 years, I
still rely on Learning Ally to make available older and more scholarly
titles I cannot readily locate on Bookshare or on NLS BARD.  Learning
Ally played a huge part in my intellectual development, at least from
7th grade on up--maybe even earlier.  I would hate to see blind people
no longer thinking their work irrelevant or thinking they do not
welcome blind subscribers who want to download their books on the
newest and most popular audiobook reading devices.  I think a lot of
Learning Ally's material falls into an underserved niche.  Their
recorded books still are quite useful to those
who are in graduate school, compelled to access specialized titles for
their research that are not in high demand from the casual reading
public and which are therefore possibly not present in the Bookshare
or BARD catalogs.

Kind regards,

-Kane