[access-uk] Re: The Kindle
- From: Kevin Cussick <the.big.white.shepherd@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2010 12:21:53 +0100
Hello Steve,
Thanks for this.
for those who don't want to look up the url here is what is said below.
I think it has a bit to go before I will buy one but it is good news.
An Accessibility Review of the Amazon Kindle 3
By Ricky Enger
With contributions from Serotalk Staff
The Serotalk team was quite excited to read that Amazon would be
releasing the third generation of its popular Kindle EReader, and this
time the device would boast several accessibility enhancements. As soon
as the unit was available, we purchased one from Amazon and began the
process of testing it in-house. The unit we chose had both wifi and 3G,
and during our testing we used version 3.01 of the Kindle firmware and,
a bit later, version 3.02. We noticed no appreciable difference between
the two firmware versions in terms of accessibility improvements. In
this review, we will do our best to provide an accurate picture of what
blind users can expect when using the Kindle 3. In addition, with this
post we aim to give feedback to the Amazon developers for creating an
even better and more accessible Kindle user experience. While we will
give general descriptions of how to use the Kindle in this document, we
strongly recommend that you read the User’s Guide if you’d like more
in-depth instructions.
Using the Kindle for The First Time
If you’ve purchased your Kindle using your Amazon account, the unit will
come already registered to you, and the name on your Amazon account will
be displayed on the screen. However, it will not talk when you first
turn it on. The accessibility on the Kindle consists of two features:
“voice guide” and text-to-speech”. The “voice guide” feature is what you
will use to navigate menus and materials on the device, and there is
currently no way to enable this feature without sighted help. To enable
“voice guide”, press the menu button which is just above the 5-way
navigation control, choose settings, and turn on “voice guide”. Once
this feature is on, it will remain activated even when you restart your
Kindle. While we’re glad to see this feature included, we’d like to see
a way for a blind person to turn it on independently. This could easily
be done by assigning a keyboard shortcut, allowing it to be toggled at
will. Other keyboard shortcuts already exist for doing things like
adding bookmarks, posting to social networks and so on, and this could
easily be added in a firmware update.
Acquiring Content
There are thousands of text and audio books, periodicals and blogs which
can be read with your Kindle. You can transfer your personal documents,
as well as Audible content and MP3 music to your device directly from
your computer. The Kindle appears as a removable drive in Windows
Explorer, allowing you to copy content from your computer. When you’d
like to purchase new content, there are two ways for Kindle users to do
this. Users can shop in the Kindle store from their computer, or
directly from the device itself. Unfortunately, only one of these
methods is accessible for blind users at this time. Neither the Kindle
Store nor the web browser on the device is accessible. You’ll need to
purchase any items you’d like to read using your computer, and those
items will then be delivered wirelessly to your Kindle. When searching
for text content in the Kindle store, you’ll want to be sure and read
the description of the content you hope to purchase. The description
indicates whether the content you’ve selected allows the use of
text-to-speech or not. If you purchase content with the text-to-speech
option disabled by request of the publisher, you’ll be unable to read it
accessibly on your device.
Navigating and Reading Content
As mentioned above, there are several types of content which can be read
with the Kindle. These include, but are not limited to, books,
newspapers and magazines, blogs, and Audible content. The Kindle’s
text-to-speech feature is used to read text content aloud using the
Samantha or Tom voice from Nuance. The text-to-speech settings on the
device allow you to switch between male and female voices, and you can
also choose from 3 speed settings: slower, default, and faster. We
found that the default speed sounded most natural for reading, and
though the “faster” setting did give us the speed we were hoping for,
the speech sounded choppy and uncomfortable to listen to. However, this
is not a function of the device, but rather the text-to-speech engine
itself.
Books
To read a book on the Kindle, use the 5-way navigation controller to
move through the content displayed on your kindle’s home screen. Note
that you can always push the home button from anywhere to take you to
this screen. The Page-up and page-down keys can be used to move through
pages on the home screen. “Voice Guide” will announce the number of
pages present on the home screen, as well as the page you’re currently
on. Once you’ve found the book you’d like to read, press the center of
the 5-way navigation controller. Now, the book is open, and you’ll hear
its title as well as a percentage indicator of where you are in the
book. In order to begin reading the book though, you’ll need to enable
text-to-speech. Do this by pressing the text key, just to the right of
the space bar, and choosing “text-to-speech”: “turn on”, from the menu.
The book will immediately begin reading from the beginning, or from the
last place you stopped. To pause or resume speech, press the space bar.
At this time, navigation within a text is not possible. You cannot use
the page-up or page-down buttons to scroll through text, even if
text-to-speech is paused. You also cannot move through the text using
the 5-way navigation controller. When text-to-speech is off, there are
numerous ways to navigate within a book. Users can press the page-up
and page-down keys to scroll through text, the 5-way navigation
controller for more fine-grained scrolling, or the “go to” option,
accessed by pressing the menu key, to choose a chapter or section.
Unfortunately, the chapters and sections are not spoken aloud by “voice
guide” if you attempt to use the “go to” option, and this option does
not appear at all once text-to-speech has been enabled. Also, there is
no spoken feedback when scrolling through the document if text-to-speech
is off, so none of these options for navigation are available to the
blind user. This means that although you can read a book on the device,
it is not ideal for materials such as textbooks, Bibles, or even the
Kindle user’s guide, where you may want to jump to specific portions of
the text rather than reading it straight through.
Newspapers and Periodicals
As mentioned above, the Kindle can provide access to thousands of
newspapers and magazines, and this is where the device really shines,
both for the blind and sighted user. When subscribing to these types of
materials, the latest issue will automatically be delivered wirelessly
to your Kindle as soon as the content becomes available. As with books,
you may choose the periodical you’d like to read by navigating to it
from the home screen. Unlike books, however, you have a bit more
control when navigating this type of content. When you’ve chosen the
periodical you’d like to read, “voice guide” will announce the option to
view sections list. Press the center of the 5-way navigation controller
to do this. Here, you’ll see a list of sections in the periodical
which you can navigate using up or down arrows on the 5-way navigation
controller. When you find a section of interest to you, press the right
arrow to hear how many articles are in the section, and press the center
of the navigation controller to be taken to the list of articles
itself. Navigate the articles with the up and down arrows, and press
the center button on the article of your choice. Unlike the home
screen, where “voice guide” speaks the number of pages that the content
list takes up, navigating the article list within a periodical only
gives the number of articles in a particular section, but not the number
of pages that the list covers. This means that if, for example, you
have a section containing 12 articles and you view the list of articles
in that section, you may be initially confused because you only see
titles for the first two articles in the list. Pressing your page-up
and page-down keys will allow you to navigate through the remainder of
the articles in the list, but there is no indication of when you have
reached the beginning or end of the list.
Once you’ve opened an article by selecting it with the center button,
you’ll need to turn text-to-speech on to begin reading it. Note that
text-to-speech preferences for any content you read are not saved,
meaning that you will need to enable text to speech for each bit of
content you open, each time you open it. As previously described in the
section on reading books, it is not possible to scroll through text once
text-to-speech has been enabled. In addition, you cannot navigate to
and activate any links present in the periodical. To be able to do
this, navigation within documents while text-to-speech is on would need
to be supported, and the Kindle browser itself would need to be
accessible. We very much hope to see both these enhancements in a
future release.
Despite these issues, we found reading periodicals on the Kindle a very
pleasant experience. In fact, we found reading this type of material on
the Kindle preferable to reading it in the browser. Since the interface
for navigating through sections and articles was quite intuitive, and we
didn’t have to skip past navigation links or advertisements as we would
in a browser, we were able to read periodicals very efficiently with the
Kindle. We also liked the ability to clip an article whose text could
later be shared with others. We couldn’t clip particular passages since
highlighting and selecting is not supported when text-to-speech is on,
but clipping the article in its entirety was easy. This is done by
selecting and opening the article, and without enabling text-to-speech,
pressing the menu button and choosing “clip article”.
Audiobooks
The Kindle supports reading of Audible content which can be purchased
directly from the Kindle store and downloaded over wifi, or transferred
from the PC when the Kindle is connected via USB. As with other types
of content, you may select the Audible book you’d like to read from the
home screen. After you’ve pressed the center button on the 5-way
navigation controller, the book opens, announcing your current position
and the remaining time in the file. To play or pause, press the space
bar. Once the book is playing, you can use the left and right arrows on
the 5-way navigation controller to view options, which include the
ability to move to beginning, move backward and forward 30 seconds, and
move to previous or next section.
While we believe that an enhancement for adjusting playback speed would
be a useful feature for blind and sighted users alike, there are no
accessibility concerns with the current implementation of audiobook
playback.
Adding Notes and Highlights
One of the best things about reading digital books on the Kindle is the
ability to make notes to yourself about a section in a book, or
highlight a particular passage that you find especially important. This
is quite useful when viewing study guides, religious texts, or even a
book club selection you’re reading and discussing with others. For the
sighted user, Kindle makes it possible to highlight certain passages
which you can later revisit, and you can even share these passages on
social networks like Twitter or Facebook. For the blind user, however,
using this feature is not supported. While you can add a note to a
book, and later view it accessibly with your Kindle, you cannot
associate that note with a particular spot in the book. Without the
ability to view the note in its proper context in the book, this feature
is not at all useful at present. Additionally, linking your social
network accounts with your Kindle is not accessible, so the blind user
cannot participate in sharing information with others.
Searching With the Kindle
The Kindle allows you to search the materials on your device, two
preloaded dictionaries, and even the Kindle store, using the built-in
qwerty keyboard. We were very pleased to note that this feature is
quite usable by a blind person, at least when searching through content
on the device. While we would prefer an option for keys to be echoed as
they are pressed, it was still possible for us to accurately type search
terms without this.
There are several ways to search for content, but the easiest way we’ve
found is to simply begin typing your word or phrase while on the home
screen, and pressing the center button to submit the search query.
You’ll be presented with a list of content containing your search terms,
and the number of times the search term occurs within each piece of
content. Select the piece of content you want by navigating to it and
pressing the center button, where you’ll be presented with a list of
passages within the content that contain your search terms. A couple of
sentences of the passage are read by “voice guide”, which makes it very
easy to determine if you’ve found the passage you wanted. You can
select your passage with the center key, and the content will open with
the cursor positioned on the sentence in the passage containing your
search terms. You’ll still need to enable text-to-speech to begin
reading your content.
While searching content on the device works well, we were very
disappointed when searching either of the dictionaries included by
default with the Kindle. Yes, we could find the terms we searched for,
but neither of the dictionaries included in the device allow the use of
text-to-speech. Since Amazon certainly has a say in which content is
preloaded on the Kindle, it was disheartening to see that no effort was
made to include a dictionary usable by blind consumers. We want to see
this rectified in a future release, whether through negotiations with
publishers to allow text-to-speech to be used with their books, or
through selecting dictionaries which don’t have text-to-speech restrictions.
The Bottom Line
The Kindle has made quite significant improvements to its accessibility
since text-to-speech was first introduced on the second-generation
unit. We are very hopeful that Amazon will continue its commitment to
accessibility with each new firmware revision of the current hardware.
As things stand, this unit makes an excellent choice for reading
newspapers, magazines, blogs and audiobooks. With that said, there are
some major changes which must be made before this device can truly take
its rightful place in the homes and classrooms of blind consumers.
While some of these changes must happen on the Kindle itself, there are
broader concerns. Namely, even when the Kindle becomes fully
accessible, a disturbing number of authors and publishers do not allow
the use of text-to-speech with their materials. This was brought about
when Amazon, under pressure from the Authors Guild, allowed authors and
publishers to disable text-to-speech in their materials if they wished.
In negociations with a number of disability groups, including the
National Federation of The Blind, the Authors guild proposed two
solutions for allowing text-to-speech to be used by the blind and
print-disabled community. One suggestion was that the right to use
text-to-speech should cost the consumer extra money, and this suggestion
was summarily dismissed. The other proposed solution was a registration
service, wherein a person would prove their print disability in order to
gain access to text-to-speech in all published materials. This system
was deemed burdensome by the coalition of disability groups involved in
the negociations and was not implemented. We don’t know if the system
was rejected because of privacy concerns surrounding the need to
disclose disability, concerns that certain disability groups would be
excluded by the proposed system, or some combination of the two. You
can read the Reading Rights Coalition’s description of the issue, and
the Authors Guild’s response to get a better idea of the big picture.
Both the items above were posted in April 2009, and sadly there have
been no significant changes in the state of things since that time.
With the major improvements we’ve already seen in the accessibility of
the Kindle itself, it’s more important than ever that we advocate for
full accessibility to its content as well. For a start, you can sign
the petition to allow everyone access to ebooks. You can contact the
Authors Guild directly with your concerns. You can become involved with
the Reading Rights Coalition. You can contact publishers and authors
who have chosen to disable text-to-speech in their Kindle ebooks, and
share in your own words how that decision affects you directly.
Regarding accessibility of the Kindle itself, here are the five
essential updates we’d like to see in the next firmware release.
ü Ability to turn on Voice Guide independently.
ü Implementation of universal text-to-speech setting, eliminating the
need to turn on text-to-speech for each piece of content.
ü Ability to navigate and select text within a book.
ü Ability to highlight or make notes on specific passages in a book.
ü Ability to browse the Kindle store and purchase items directly from
the device.
With these changes, we strongly believe that the Kindle will become an
invaluable tool in the hands of blind students everywhere, and will be
equally appreciated by those who want the freedom to purchase and read a
good book, no matter where they are. These changes cannot happen though
without sincere and constructive feedback from the blind community. It
is not enough to say we want a device to be accessible. We must be
actively involved in making that accessibility take shape. Whether you
choose to express your support for Amazon’s accessibility efforts by
purchasing the Kindle now or simply by sharing your appreciation for the
progress so far, let your voice be heard. Send your feedback,
suggestions, and ideas to kindle-feedback@xxxxxxxxxxx Don’t just wait
for accessibility to happen
--
All The Best
Kevin Cussick
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