[stylist] The new Kendle

[Bridgit Pollpeter]

First, as a blind consumer, I completely agree and wish all companies
had to make all products accessible for everyone.

Having said that, I will now undoubtedly wax controversial. Prepare
yourselves! LOL

>From a business stand point, particularly living in a capitalist
society, it's not considered cost-effective, or reasonable, to provide
accessibility for what is a small minority of people. I don't agree with
this line of thinking, but there it is.

We can send letter after letter, stand outside of businesses picketing,
form coalitions, hell, dress in sack-cloth, rub ashes all over and
refuse to bow down to rulers, but the fact is that the majority of
consumers have no problem using products like the Kendle, and companies
like Amazon aren't losing millions of dollars, actually, quite the
opposite. So there's no real benefit to appease blind consumers since we
make up an extremely small portion of the market.

Even boycotting won't make a dent in the armor of companies especially
big money making conglomerates like Amazon. The nicest person in the
world doesn't go into business to help people; it's to make money.
Amazon may have pretended to play nice and compromise when the NFB and
other groups formed the Reading coalition, but once we left the office,
well it's clear what their practices consist of. They don't feel it's
worth their time, or money, to investigate ways making products like
Kendle accessible.

Something has to be done though. With current trends in society,
technology is increasing at rapid rates, and almost everything operates
technologically nowadays. It's not fair to ask certain populations to
accept an inferior status because we can't independently operate much of
this technology.

This situation shows that despite what words are said, not all people
are deemed equal. Hundreds and thousands of years later, if you're
white, male and nondisabled, you're on the top of the food chain.
Equality trickles down from this Mt. Olympus usually ending up as stag
net pools containing the undesirables.

The problem with saying F U to companies and their technology is that
one, it's becoming more and more difficult to live without using
technology. Cars, kitchen appliances, computers, school books, toys-
more and more stuff is man-made, but computer operated. At some point,
in order to retain independence, we will require accessibility in more
products. And two, we can accept old-fashioned ways, but as time goes
on, the world won't support these ways. Books on tape or Braille, and
even CD now are being produced less and less. If we want access to new
material, it is already becoming difficult to do so, or at least to do
so without waiting months and years.

I don't think current methods are working to get us the results we want.
I'm not sure how to fully answer this, but we really have to think
outside of the box if we want change. We may shout loud, and that gets
us attention initially, but it's not helping us maintain an effective
presence.

So while I completely agree it's unfair and wrong to not consider
accessibility with products, I think we need a drastic new approach to
win the right of accessibility.

Sincerely,
Bridgit Kuenning-Pollpeter
Read my blog at:
http://blogs.livewellnebraska.com/author/bpollpeter/
 
"History is not what happened; history is what was written down."
The Expected One- Kathleen McGowan

Message: 13
Date: Thu, 29 Sep 2011 21:58:27 -0400
From: "Ashley Bramlett" <bookwormahb at earthlink.net>
To: "Writer's Division Mailing List" <stylist at nfbnet.org>
Subject: Re: [stylist] the new kendle
Message-ID: <CA08E197576D429190614C005C80754E at OwnerPC>
Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1";
	reply-type=response

Atty,
I'm not surprised. Many corporations don't really care much. It took a
suit 
to change AOL and Target.
Don't use their software. Buy elsewhere! Unfortunately, bookstores are
going 
out of business and online is taking over. So, we have fewer options.
You might think bookstore, that is not accessible. True, but you can
send 
the book to Learning ally or scan the book.
But now with everyone buying online, we have few options and ebooks are
more 
the norm.
Are other ebook readers accessible and if so, How?
The only national bookstore chain, Barnes and Noble, has ebooks. Is
their 
ebook reader accessible?
Stick with accessible ebook readers. Also there are mainstream recorded 
books; more and more recorded because non disabled people see the joy of

listening to books.
Audible.com is one source and I'm sure there's more.

I encourage you to write letters and yes a petition sounds good. I'd 
certainly sign one. But
I've seen too little attention to accessibility from corperations, so
I'm 
skeptical we'll see progress.

I heard the older kindel was more accessible. Perhaps people can stick
with 
that. Or be more old fashioned like me and don't use ebooks. Read via 
cassette, CD, hard copy braille, and
NLS digital cartriges.