[Sportsandrec] Reading Rights Coalition

Sat Apr 4 01:49:31 UTC 2009

Do we really need to download an application in order to sign the petition? 
I'm getting a request on faceBook to download an application and I'm a 
little weary of doing so because I suspected something more simple and less 
time consuming.

LM

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Karen Zakhnini" <kaycee510 at hotmail.com>
To: <sportsandrec at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Friday, April 03, 2009 5:04 PM
Subject: [Sportsandrec] Reading Rights Coalition

The Reading Rights Coalition, which represents people who cannot read print, 
will protest the threatened removal of the text-to-speech function from 
e-books for the Amazon Kindle 2 outside the Authors Guild headquarters in 
New York City at 31 East 32nd Street on April 7, 2009, from noon to 2:00 
p.m. The coalition includes the blind, people with dyslexia, people with 
learning or processing issues, seniors losing vision, people with spinal 
cord injuries, people recovering from strokes, and many others for whom the 
addition of text-to-speech on the Kindle 2 promised for the first time easy, 
mainstream access to over 245,000 books.

When Amazon released the Kindle 2 electronic book reader on February 9, 
2009, the company announced that the device would be able to read e-books 
aloud using text-to-speech technology. Under pressure from the Authors 
Guild, Amazon has announced that it will give authors and publishers the 
ability to disable the text-to-speech function on any or all of their 
e-books available for the Kindle 2.

While the Kindle 2 is not currently accessible to blind users, Amazon 
recently announced on its Kindle 2 blog that it is currently at work on 
making the device’s navigational features accessible to the blind.

Please sign the online petition and spread the word about the discrimination 
of the Author's Guild: 
http://www.facebook.com/ext/share.php?sid=75465378342&h=8sB2E&u=G6Bkw&ref=nf

The coalition includes: American Association of People with Disabilities, 
American Council of the Blind, American Foundation for the Blind, 
Association on Higher Education and Disability, Bazelon Center for Mental 
Health Law, Burton Blatt Institute, Digital Accessible Information System 
(DAISY) Consortium, Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund (DREDF), 
IDEAL Group, Inc., International Center for Disability Resources on the 
Internet, International Dyslexia Association, International Dyslexia 
Association––New York Branch, Knowledge Ecology International, Learning 
Disabilities Association of America, National Center for Learning 
Disabilities, National Disability Rights Network, National Federation of the 
Blind, NISH, and the National Spinal Cord Injury Association. In addition to 
the April 7 New York City protest, the coalition will participate in the Los 
Angeles Times Festival of Books on April 25-26.

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