I got this back from Fictionwise.com the eReader people. This is the very thing I have worried about with the action of the Author's Guild in the United States.
Here we have a company claiming that screen readers are a violation of copyright, which is not the case either in the U.S. or Australia. Furthermore in the case of the Macintosh and the iPhone the screen reader is a part of the operating system and not as Fictionwise.com would suggest "another program".
It is also an interesting question if writing an application or device which deliberately inaccessible, as would seem to be the case here, as opposed to simply forgetting to include accessibility may well be illegal under civil rights laws in several nations.
At the very least Apple should not be a party to such a thing and should never approve applications which have been so crippled by deliberate act.
I have asked Fictionwise to put this statement into writing and to mail it to me. I would urge those of you who feel strongly about this issue to also contact them at support@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Gregory Kearney Manager - Accessible Media Association for the Blind of Western Australia 61 Kitchener Avenue, PO Box 101 Victoria Park 6979, WA Australia Telephone: +61 (08) 9311 8202 Telephone: +1 (307) 224-4022 (North America) Fax: +61 (08) 9361 8696 Toll free: 1800 658 388 (Australia only) Email: gkearney@xxxxxxxxx Begin forwarded message:
From: "Fictionwise.com" <support@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Date: 11 August 2009 2:49:02 AM To: gkearney@xxxxxxxxx Subject: Response for Support Ticket #102495 Hi,Unfortunately, the ability to scoop the ebook's text using another application has been disabled for copyright-protection reasons.Being able to scoop the text out, into another program, would allow for easy duplication of copyrighted materials.Our software cannot be used with screen-reader software. We apologize for the inconvenience. Best Regards, Ted eReader.com Support Team ============================================================ You wrote:No accessibility for the blind using VoiceOver on either Mac or iPhone. Your Macintosh and iPhone applications are not accessible to the blind using the built in screen reader on both devices. Lists of book can not be navigated andbooks once loaded can not be read. Why is this the case? Greg Kearney Manager -Accessible Media Association for the Blind of Western Australia
Click on the link below to go to our homepage. http://www.icanworkthisthing.com Manage your subscription by using the web interface on the link below. //www.freelists.org/list/macvoiceoverUsers can subscribe to this list by sending email to macvoiceover-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with 'subscribe' in the Subject field OR by logging into the Web interface at //www.freelists.org/list/macvoiceover
