[nfbwatlk] Upcoming Protest Demonstration and Conference Call

[Mike Freeman]

Fellow Federationists:

 

The National Federation of the Blind is planning a demonstration in front of
Amazon’s headquarters in Seattle to protest the inaccessibility of Kindle
books (on whatever platform); Amazon is engaging in a big push to market its
Kindle technology to K-12 schools. This protest will not only concern the
actual Kindle devices but, more importantly and primarily, the
inaccessibility of Amazon’s “WhisperCast” technology to push Kindle material
to various devices used by K-12 public school students. (For those who might
think of the plug-in for windows PC’s to read Kindle books, even *they*
don’t cut it in that one cannot search documents, navigate by character,
word, line, sentence, paragraph etc. nor can one set and navigate to
bookmarks). In any event, our primary emphasis will be on the
inaccessibility of the WhisperCast system.

 

More details will be available during a conference call which will take
place at 4:30 p.m. PST on Sunday, November 18. John Paré, Director of our
Advocacy and Policy department, will be on hand to explain the plans for the
protest in greater detail.

 

I urge all to be part of this conference call. I also urge chapter
presidents to announce the demonstration and the conference call during
their meetings this Saturday.

 

The conference call access information is as follows: call (218) 399-3600.
When prompted, please enter 849246 followed by the pound-sign.

 

You won’t want to miss this call and the opportunity to take part in this
protest. Federationists from around the country will be there standing with
us.

 

Mike Freeman, President

National Federation of the Blind of Washington