[Nfbofsc] FW: A note from NFB to the KNFB Reader list regarding KNFB Reader in response to all the traffic about Voice Dream Scanner and other apps

Fri Apr 5 21:38:50 UTC 2019

I received the below message from the KNFB Reader user list serve.

Steve Cook

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District 2 NFB of SC State Board Member

1st Vice President of the Columbia Chapter of the NFB of SC

1st Vice President of the Computer Science & Technology Division of the NFB of SC

Dear List Members,

This is Scott White, Director of Sponsored Technology Programs for the

National Federation of the Blind. I want to write to you today to address

some of the concerns that have been expressed on the list regarding the

performance of the KNFB Reader product and the responsiveness of the

customer service. We regret that there is frustration around the product and

wish to express the fact that we are listening even if you do not feel you

are getting satisfactory information. We hope this note helps address some

of the concerns and outlines some of the future steps.

Those of you who attend conventions of the National Federation of the Blind

are well aware that the technology behind the KNFB Reader and KNFB Reader

Enterprise products are owned by the KNFB Reader LLC which is a wholly owned

subsidiary of the National Federation of the Blind. This has been the case

since 2015. The KNFB Reader LLC has no intention of selling the technology

to anyone and would never do so without public disclosure to the National

Federation of the Blind.

The KNFB Reader LLC has a partnership agreement with Sensotec NV to develop,

promote, and support the KNFB Reader line of products. This agreement has

been in place since 2015 and has never changed. Since 2015, the KNFB Reader

LLC has received in-kind support from the National Federation of the Blind.

Were it not for that support, the product would have disappeared from the

market two years ago. Despite a number of pressures, the National Federation

of the Blind has insisted that the price of the KNFB Reader not be raised

and has urged steep discounts in the product when opportunities arose to do

so.

As you are well aware, a number of new innovations have happened in the

marketplace for access to information. This was stimulated by the creation

of KNFB Reader, going back to the early part of the century when the

National Federation of the Blind and Ray Kurzweil sought to bring scan and

read technology to portable devices-first, a dedicated device and later,

smart phones. The KNFB Reader LLC has attempted to continue development of

the product even though there have been limited dollars for further

development. In 2018, the National Federation of the Blind announced that it

intended to put the core technology of the KNFB Reader into the NFB-NEWSLINE

mobile application and distribute that free to all blind people. That move

is a significant investment on behalf of the National Federation of the

Blind since it will continue to require development and licensing of

technologies to maintain the technical components inside the NFB-NEWSLINE

mobile user interface. This also means that the core technology would be

freely available to every blind person in the United States.

While the intent has been to continue to maintain a paid version of KNFB

Reader, the aggressive development of other products in the marketplace and

declining sales of the KNFB Reader product have made it difficult to

accelerate progress timelines with our development partner. We recognize

that performance improvements are not where our customers would like them to

be. We are re-evaluating our strategy and assessing what we can do to make

those needed improvements.

For anyone that needs KNFB Reader or KNFB Reader Enterprise tech support,

they should send their concern to

support at knfbreader.com <mailto:support at knfbreader.com> <mailto:support at knfbreader.com <mailto:support at knfbreader.com> >. When you send your

concern to that address, it is automatically entered into our ticket

tracking system for resolution. We are examining our procedures to determine

where support items are getting dropped. You can be assured that common

feature requests or improvement suggestions are well documented in our

system.

The National Federation of the Blind is proud that we have been the

innovators of reading technology for the blind from the start with the

original Kurzweil Reading Machine in the 1970s to the mobile platforms in

recent years. Our goal has not been to be a technology company. Our goal has

been to stimulate the marketplace to develop solutions where inadequate

innovations exist. We believe that this has been the case with the

significant investments the National Federation of the Blind has made in the

KNFB Reader line of products. If there continue to be gaps in the market, it

is our job as an organization to determine how to lead innovation in those

places and then let the market take it to a mature level of development. A

more recent example of this was the National Federation of the Blind's role

in the Transforming Braille Group which was established to stimulate low

cost Braille display technologies. Now a number of products are emerging on

the market that have the promise of revolutionizing the way refreshable

Braille is delivered. We continue to need the help of members of the

Federation to determine where those gaps are and how we will provide

leadership in those spaces.

Thank you to each of you for continuing to be passionate about creating

equal access to information and to raising expectations for the technologies

we use.

Scott White

Director of Sponsored Technology Programs

200 East Wells Street, Baltimore, MD 21230

(410) 659-9314, extension 2231 | email: swhite at nfb.org <mailto:swhite at nfb.org> 

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