SeroTalk Podcast 134: The Cheese Stands Alone

2 Responses to SeroTalk Podcast 134: The Cheese Stands Alone

1. Russ Kiehne says:

   December 12, 2012 at 9:57 am

   I was wondering, will the Serotalk team be doing An Accessibility Review of
   The Amazon Kindle Fire 8.9 tablet like they did with the Kindle 3?
2. Russ Kiehne says:

   December 13, 2012 at 10:19 am

   Doing some research, I found the following from NFB. I can’t see buying a Kindle
   Fire at this point in time. I’ll continue to use my Kindle Keyboard to reae Kindle books.

   Amazon, Why Do You Keep Burning Blind Readers?
   Submitted by cvangerven on Fri, 12/07/2012 – 13:00
   Blog Date:
   Friday, December 7, 2012
   By Amy Mason

   According to ZDNet and Engadget the Kindle Fire will be getting Explore by
   Touch and Voice Guide to provide
   accessibility features to blind and visually impaired customers.
   These features were first introduced in Google’s Android, Ice Cream Sandwich
   operating system. (This is the basis of the OS for the Kindle Fire and Fire HD
   which has been heavily skinned by Amazon for the device.) Google has since
   released Jelly Bean which has improved markedly on accessibility. If this
   were Amazon’s only weakness,
   an out-of-date OS, I would be disappointed, but I would understand. This is
   not, however, Amazon’s only problem.
   Their weakness instead, appears to be a disregard for the wishes of its blind
   consumers.
   Blind people want Kindle books. We want them badly enough that I know several
   blind people who have chosen to buy the Kindle Keyboard, despite being unable
   to do anything more than start and stop text-to-speech on their books. The
   PC edition (with accessibility plug-in) is slightly better. If a user is
   willing to sit at a PC, they can read by navigational elements as small as a
   sentence at a time, and as large as a page (seriously, you have to sit at the
   computer and turn every page. What a thrilling way to read a book!)
   I hear a few of you saying, “Ok, Amy, so you are upset about the past, but now
   Amazon is offering this additional accessibility in the Fire”. I am sorry to
   disappoint
   you, but for all intents and purposes it did not improve on their existing efforts.
   We purchased a Kindle Fire HD, and received it last Friday. We read on
   Amazon’s website that there were accessibility features, so we felt that we
   had to do our due diligence and test their work. First of all, when you get
   the device,
   you have to have a sighted person turn on the accessibility features because
   there is no way for a blind person to turn them on independently.
   Secondly, access is limited to the device settings, the collection of books in
   a user’s library, the primary navigation buttons (back, home, and more) and
   allowing you to start and stop text-to-speech on a book. A sighted reader on
   this tablet has the capability to browse the Web, play music, play audio
   books, download and read magazines and newspapers, buy Android apps, read
   e-mail, view documents (this ay be accessible, I didn’t get a chance to check),
   browse photos, voice chat, and read books. We are limited to access to the
   settings, navigating our library, and using the digitized speech equivalent of
   a cassette tape. We can play and pause speech, and it will read continuously,
   just like on the Kindle Keyboard, but we cannot navigate accessibly. No
   headings, paragraphs, pages, sentences, words or characters can be
   distinguished, nor can you go back accessibly. Tables of contents and social
   media integration are likewise unavailable to blind users.
   We were concerned by these conclusions, and decided that perhaps we were
   missing some details, so we called the company. (Accessibility was a very
   small part of the help page after all.) We spoke with two different customer
   service reps, and indeed, the reps verified that yes, this is the extent of
   the accessibility of the device.
   It is hard to see the accessibility features in the Kindle Fire as a gesture
   of goodwill.
   Amazon is familiar enough with what true accessibility looks like, both
   directly from us, from the work their competition has done, and even from the
   screen access packages it requires to allow a PC user to read with text to
   speech on a computer.
   It cannot claim ignorance when Google, Apple, and Microsoft all offer far more
   accessible devices (they all have their problems, but let’s be honest, these
   guys are all making a legitimate effort.). Furthermore, both the iPad and the
   Nexus 7 are confirmed to offer accessible eReaders from other creators (several
   of which can be used with Braille) while no access to Kindle books is available on any of these platforms.
   Amazon needs to stop burning blind readers with these half-hearted attempts at
   accessibility in all versions of the Kindle, including the Fire. What is
   needed now is for it to implement real accessibility, rather than expecting
   blind readers to accept a cassette tape equivalent in an era of multi-purpose
   tablets.

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