hi david. why do i defend amazon? well, perhaps they deserve it.
i believe i see a fallacy that we seem to be promoting in this thread
about accessibility of the kindle ereader with bluetooth audio.
first, giving someone a unit and telling them to have a go at it
without further instruction is rather misleading.
that takes out alot of initial work by the new user of the ereader
before getting the product.
this methodology presupposes that the unit would not be bought online
by either them or a partner or friend, perhaps sighted who would help
them with the unit in question.
or, rather, it presupposes, that the blind person has zero experience
with the digital world. in either case it would, or should be, assumed
that they would get sighted help with the device.
now, i really don't believe that this is the way most transactions are
done. in my case, i do nearly all of my shopping online. i live in a
small town, and, the only large retail establishment we have is
walmart. no best buy or the same. so, i shop amazon alot. not only
that, i do alot of comparison shopping online and take the time to
learn all i can about a purchase before hitting the buy button.
for that matter, that's how inquisitive folks do the same in the sighted world.
but, yes, that presupposes that i am a user of digital devices like a
pc, laptop or such at a minimum. in other words, i'm digital aware.
so, getting back to that case of someone who has absolutely no digital
experience, it seems to me that there would be almost no way to
deliver instructions to that person except, as you offered some type
of instructions in braille. but, even that has limitations. i don't
read braille and alot of blind folks don't. so, that is only a partial
measure.
another, which i have thought of, is to provide in the box a card,
like those audio greeting cards or kids books, that have a button that
starts a short voiced audio. but, here again, would the person getting
this in the box have any idea what it was for? i doubt it.
the same for audio or youtube video online tutorials. if someone has
no digital experience, those would be wasted efforts.
so, this all comes back to, as i see it, the willingness of a person
to search out material on the web. and, having the patience and
endurance to work to find it. it's out there. plenty of it.
now, you did provide one good point that would put the onous on amazon
and allow anyone to get proper direction in using the unit no matter
their skill level. that would be an amazon help center dedicated to
the disabled user. still, here again, the person with the unit would
have to know how to contact them. even if that preferred method was
phone.
david, the catch-22 is in your imagination.
in the end, again, for amazon, seems to me it becomes a damned if you
do and damned if you don't situation. imho
no, i don't own stock in amazon, never have or do work for amazon. and
could care less if they made $500 billion a year! for, it's the
fairness in reporting.
stay well ... william
On 9/3/16, David H. Rothman <davidrothman@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
when the kindle ereader is opened and the audio is voicing, all of th
Hi, William. The operative word in the case of the basic model is "when."
People first must reach that point. We're still talking about the Catch-22
that David Faucheux warned about. Having to Google around for the
information is unacceptable, absolutely. Like some others, I remain baffled
why you're so eager to defend Amazon. With more than $100 billion in annual
revenue, it can do much better job that it is doing now – and end up making
more money in the end, with a bigger customer base.
As for the earlier TTS, I strongly agree that it was not absolutely blind
optimized (even though it's great that you were accomplished enough to make
use of it anyway). Amazon owes it to customers to do
terrific TTS interfaces for both blind people and the sighted.
Thanks,
David
