RE: Accessible Kindle for PC App Released
- From: "DJ" <grouloc@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: <jfw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 20 Jan 2011 09:20:44 -0500
Sheesh guys, at least they're working on it. I'm not responding to any
particular person, but why is it that when a piece of software is first
announced to have been made accessible, people immediately complain that
it's not perfect, it won't do this, it won't do that, bla bla bla? Yes, we
should point out that this feature or that feature could use some tweaking,
or perhaps ask what we as a community can do to help make it work more to
our liking, but can't we make a minor attempt to be a bit more diplomatic
about it? It just seems that people come off as attacking which is not
likely to get us very far. At least it usually seems that way to me.
As we all know, Amazon has a very large presence on the internet and I for
one am pleased that they are making an effort to bring the VI community in
with the rest of the world. How often do you really see this kind of effort
by other major companies?
Someone had to say this. Thanks for your time.
DJ
_____
From: jfw-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:jfw-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf
Of Gary King
Sent: Wednesday, January 19, 2011 10:23 PM
To: jfw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: Accessible Kindle for PC App Released
Brandon,
I copied the following link from the Amazon page that is linked to on the
Blind Bargains site:
mailto:kindle-PC-accessibility-feedback@xxxxxxxxxx?subject=Kindle for PC
with Accessibility Plugin Feedback
The link is rather long and may wrap in this message.
I saw on another list that someone who tried the app expected the screen
reader to be able to read the text of the book on the screen. It doesn't!
The only access to the books is with the provided text-to-speech voice. I
wouldn't try to read any books with complex layouts such as cookbooks or
books on math or chemistry.
Gary King
w4wkz@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
----- Original Message -----
From: Brandon Keith <mailto:brandonboy13@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: jfw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Wednesday, January 19, 2011 8:32 PM
Subject: Re: Accessible Kindle for PC App Released
Thank you for letting us know about this!
This is awesome!!!
Where is the best place to submit feedback to Amazon? Just on the Kindle
Support page?
Thank you,
Brandon Keith
Check out
MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/brandonkeithcom
Also add me on facebook!
brandonkeith
From: Gary King <mailto:w4wkz@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, January 19, 2011 5:16 PM
To: jfw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Accessible Kindle for PC App Released
If you've been waiting for an accessible Kindle app for the PC, you're in
luck! Go to
http://blindbargains.com
and read the entry under Latest Bargains. The link will take you to the
Amazon page that describes the app and how to download and use it. Read
through all of the Help links, and you will know all that I do about it.
The app download is 231 MB, so if you have a dialup connection, forget it!
It has been tested with JAWS and NVDA. A screen reader must be detected by
the app in order to enable text-to-speech on all Kindle books. As you may
know, authors have disabled text-to-speech on the Kindle itself for many of
their titles. At least, we will be able to read them on the computer with
this app.
You can read the books a page at a time or continuously with a male or
female voice. Navigation only goes down to the sentence level, so you can't
read word by word or have words spelled. I hope this will change in a later
version.
I would suggest that if you want to try the program that you get one of the
free books available from the Kindle Store. I visited the Free Collections
link and chose a book from the Limited Promotions section. There were 143
selections to choose from. I just made sure that I looked for the ones that
were $0.00.
These are my early impressions of the program, and at least I think they
have made a good start toward accessibility. We will need to give them
feedback to insure that improvements will be made.
Gary King
mailto:w4wkz@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
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