Today Amazon announced that it was surrendering to the Author’s Guild – Amazon Backs off Text-to-Speech Feature in Kindle – Bits Blog – NYTimes.com. The new Talk To Me feature, a form of text to speech, in Amazon’s Kindle will be disabled at the whim of the publisher. How many publishers will not exercise the option to kill TTS? This will likely undo the biggest advance in accessible reading devices since the large print book.
Therefore, we are modifying our systems so that rightsholders can decide on a title by title basis whether they want text-to-speech enabled or disabled for any particular title. We have already begun to work on the technical changes required to give authors and publishers that choice. With this new level of control, publishers and authors will be able to decide for themselves whether it is in their commercial interests to leave text-to-speech enabled. We believe many will decide that it is.
If the publishers do choose to kill TTS, Amazon should enable this feature for the blind. They should partner with the NLS. Anyone who qualifies for the NLS’ services should be able to register with Amazon for TTS enabled books.
Somehow I do not think Amazon will get into the accessible tech business. There just is not enough money in it for them.
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Petition to Amazon re: accessibility on Kindle2: http://is.gd/leh1 More info: http://is.gd/lehE (via @stcaccess)