[real-eyes] Amazon Kindle for people with disabilities
- From: <bigdaddylou63@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <real-eyes@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 5 Jan 2009 00:05:22 -0500
> IT-Director.com (UK)
> Monday, December 10, 2007
>
> Amazon Kindle for people with disabilities
>
> By Peter Abrahams
>
> Peter Abrahams, Practice Leader, Accessibility and Usability, Bloor
> Research
>
> In a previous blog Kindle and Surface new interfaces accessible? Usable? I
> wrote about Microsoft Surface and promised to extend the discussion to
> Amazon's announcement of Kindle as they represent two new user interfaces
> that may be of interest to people with disabilities.
>
> Kindle is a new electronic book reader sold by Amazon, which has some
> interesting pluses and minuses in comparison to previous attempts at
> electronic books. The major features are:
>
> It is about the size of a standard paperback but lighter.
> It uses electronic ink technology so the display looks very much like a
> standard printed page (with four grey tones but no colour). It has no back
> lighting but is read using ambient light; this means it can be read in
> bright sunlight just like a book and is probably less of a strain on the
> eyes than the glow from a standard screen.
> It has a direct connection to Amazon via a mobile phone network. The
> connection is free, you just pay for the books, or other content, you
> download.
> You can download and listen to music and audio books.
> There is a built-in dictionary, click on a word to get a definition.
> Buttons along both edges controls the page turning.
> The text can be sized.
> You can add bookmarks and notes to any document.
> If you want to add your own documents (Word etc) then you mail them to a
> special address and they are translated and downloaded for a charge (0.1
> USD in the US).
> There is a full keyboard for writing notes and searching the libraries.
> The books are in a proprietary Kindle format.
> Kindle supports listening to audio books but does not have a text to
> speech function.
> Given this brief description the question is how can it help and support
> people with disabilities.
>
> Blind
> There is no text-to-speech or Braille support so this is not of any
> interest to people who are blind. What is more worrying is that it appears
> that the large library of electronic books and periodicals is in a format
> that cannot be used by technologies that turn electronic text into speech
> or Braille. As Amazon adds content to this library the lack of access will
> become more noticeable and unfortunate.
>
> Partially Sighted
> The fact the text can be sized may be useful to some people with limited
> vision. However, it seems that the increase in text size is limited and so
> probably only useful to someone suffering from eyestrain rather than any
> significant disability.
>
> Limited Dexterity
> Many people with limited ability to use their upper arms may find this a
> very attractive product. If the device is laid in the lap or attached to a
> simple stand the user can turn the pages by pressing a button. There are
> many people who find holding a book difficult and turning pages even more
> difficult but still have some manual dexterity and this format will be a
> boon to them.
>
> Other people who are more severely disabled may still find that a simple
> stick will enable them to use this device.
>
> A simple voice activated control option could further extend range of
> disabilities supported.
>
> Cognitive disabilities
> The ability to easily access dictionary definitions could prove of some
> assistance.
>
> However, a text-to-speech option that reads the words aloud and highlights
> the text would be of much greater benefits to people with learning
> difficulties and might also aid people with limited vision or dyslexia.
>
> Summary
>
> Kindle seems to be a very interesting first generation product. There is
> no real indication that the needs of the disabled have been explicitly
> considered. It so happens that the device will be attractive to some users
> with limited dexterity.
>
> I believe that if accessibility had been considered from the beginning
> more people could have been supported and the overall device would have
> been more usable and attractive to everybody.
>
> I hope that the design of version two will explicitly consider and include
> accessibility needs.
>
>
> http://www.it-director.com/blogs/Abrahams_Accessibility/2007/12/Amazon_Kindle_for_people_with_disabilities.html
>
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