Many people have a lifetime habit of reading and are become frustrated when macular degeneration converts the to “low vision people” late in life. They have vision but no truly convenient way to access printed materials. There are magnifying systems, but really not convenient. What we’d like to see are e-book readers that support extremely large type sizes. I can read the largest size available on the Sony Digital Reader, using magnifying glasses focus about 3.5 inches away, requiring the e-book to be held rather close. I imagine most people with my kind of vision would like adjustable type size to about 48 point. At that size a 6 inch display becomes too small even in the horizontal position. Perhaps a large format e-book reader could support such large type sizes. But, if they do not I expect companies that specializing in low vision/blind products will eventually, at a much higher price point.

As far as built-in audio is concerned, MP3 format is simply inadequate. If a device is going to support audio books it needs DAISY or some other specialized software. Text-to-speech conversion software works, but not as well as we would like; pronunciations are frequently off and it is impossible to get inflections and natural speaking rhythms.

I spend a lot of time at the computer screen where I can control type size but I don’t find it a comfortable for relaxed reading. I really miss being able to sprawl on a couch or easy chair with a book and adjust my position however I like.

I’m not concerned about WI-FI and numerous other features that normal readers might be picky about. I just want to read. Hopefully, someone on the manufacturing side is listening.

“Hachette has agreed to donate digital files for all 1,700 currently digitized frontlist and backlist titles. Secondly, Hachette will refer all customer service requests for accessible books to Bookshare for fulfillment.”

So Hachette outsourced their disabled customers to Bookshare – umm, isn’t that discrimination? Why didn’t they pay Bookshare to convert their e-books to accessible formats so they could sell them along side their ‘regular’ e-books for ‘regular’ customers?

Just askin’

Standardized formats combined with reader SW capable of converting text to speech, braille, adjusted size/color, etc, are a must for a modern market, and should be paramount in the planning of all HW and SW makers.

This is most likely to happen when disabled and non-disabled readers are using the same technology. I own a reasonably cheap scanner that allows me to scan and read books on my computer in large font sizes. It’s reasonably cheap simply because sighted people need scanners too, so the demand for them has brought down the market price. By contrast, I’d have to shell out three to five thousand dollars if I wanted to buy a device that would let me read books in braille on my computer. There’s no demand among sighted readers for braille displays.

E-books ought to be an area where disabled and non-disabled readers can share the same software and hardware, but that’s often not the case. At the moment, Bookshare is doing the lion’s share of work in providing electronic texts to American disabled readers, and Bookshare does work with publishers who are willing to offer them their own copies of the electronic texts. (Otherwise, Bookshare distributes copies that are scanned from printed books, as permitted by the Chaffee amendment.) But Bookshare currently has a policy that forbids it from distributing e-books that were originally in proprietary formats. Clearly, something needs to be done, either on the techonological level or on the legal level, because these days, many small-press books are only available in e-book format. Disabled readers are currently being denied access to a growing number of books, which violates the spirit of the Chaffee amendment.