[access-uk] Re: Publishers' practices hit blind readers
- From: "Clive Lever" <clive.lever@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 6 Mar 2011 14:44:20 -0000
Hi all,
Palin will appear on the fifth volume of Guide Cats for the Blind, now titled
"Herding Cats". One of the things we could do with this is to try to enlist
the support of the author for the right of blind people to read their published
material. I will probably forward this to any other contributor to Guide Cats
I can think of, who has published bestsellers. Louis De Berniere, of Captain
Corelli's Mandolin fame, John Humphreys and Ian MacMillan for starters.
Best,
Clive
----- Original Message -----
From: Derek Hornby
To: access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Sunday, March 06, 2011 10:26 AM
Subject: [access-uk] Publishers' practices hit blind readers
I thought this may interest soe of you here.
The Observer 6 March 2011
Publishers' practices hit blind readers
One of the many miracles of the Kindle is the text-to-speech feature, a
standard
device that enables blind people to "read" electronic newspaper copy, hear
about
interesting new titles and access them without difficulty. At least, that's
what
they'd do if publishers did not disable the text-to-speech function. A blind
Observer reader, John Godber, tells me that this "Scrooge-like" behaviour is
denying him access to the writing of Bill Bryson, Michael Palin, Richard
Mabey
and Benjamin Zephaniah, to name some of the most prominent. Godber says that
this is "not just about the Kindle. All future ebook readers will have
text-to-speech functionality built in". But if the publishers disable this
service to the visually impaired, it's not just mean minded, it will be,
dare I
say, short sighted.
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