Schools Shun Kindle Due to Lack of Accessibility to the Blind
Despite a function on the Kindle that reads text aloud, two universities and an advocacy group for the visually impaired adopted a staunch anti-Kindle stance Wednesday. According to an Associated Press report, the University of Wisconsin - Madison and Syracuse University won't invest in more electronic readers for college students because the audio feature is too difficult for a visually impaired person to activate. To engage the feature, a user must navigate a series of onscreen menus -- a process requiring a degree of sightedness that many of the United States' 1.3 million legally blind simply don't have. A spokesman for the National Federation of the Blind applauded the schools' efforts. "These universities are saying, `Our policy is nondiscrimination, so we're not going to adopt a technology we know for sure discriminates against blind students'," Chris Danielsen told the Associated Press. With such strong words, it's no wonder that universities aren't ready to invest in the burgeoning e-book market. But Amazon.com, Inc. spokesman Drew Herdener said he hopes to change that. The company is working on improving the Kindle so that everybody can easily use it. Just how that'll happen, though, remains unclear.
For the record, we're rooting for the Kindle. Take it from former college students, the potential of having cheaper, digital textbooks is enough to make a starving student's mouth water. [From: Associated Press, via Newsvine]
Louis Braille, the man that invented the system of raised bumps that allow the blind to read, will celebrate his 200th birthday this year. His gift to the world, Braille, allows the sight-deficient to live relatively normal lives, reading elevator signs and ordering from the menu at certain restaurants. However, in the increasingly touchscreen-reliant, wireless world, the blind are at a loss. MP3 players, most cell phones, and computers are virtually useless (Braille-enabled computers are staggeringly expensive, and laptops can only read one line of text at a time). 
_thumbnail.jpg "Vintage Keyboards")
