Apple iPad
Apple’s new iPad has had me doing some thinking about its potential impact fro the visually impaired, particularly for blind photographers. Reading an article today (thanks, Dad) about a new e-book reader software, Blio, soon to be put out by a company run by Ray Kurzweil, prompted me to consider a new issue, accessible photography books (and magazines). I rarely read books about photography. The font is universally too small, the books too heavy and there are no audio editions. The iPad has the possibility of changing this.
Blio is supposedly designed to enrich the e-reading experience with audio, video and web content. On a device like the iPad, with its large, high-resolution color screen, we could see the release of more photography-related media. With text-to-speech, we could even see the advent of accessible photography books and magazines.I can imagine looking at full-screen images while listening to the accompanying text. Not only would this a be a great format for re-releasing books by the masters, but this would also be a great format for every photographer with a story to tell. Scott Bourne has already expounded about the iPad’s potential as a digital portolio. On his Photofocus blog post, What the Apple Tablet Will Mean to Photographers, Bournes writes that “(t)he portable portfolio will get an amazing jump-start because of the new tablet, and all the competition that follows it.” The next step is for photographers to publish e-books, through sites like Blurb, for the iPad and the tablet platform in general.
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Interesting idea. Would you get an iPad if you could do all of those enhanced e-book functions on a laptop?
Laptops do not work for me. I need to get real close to the screen to be able to read text. The k
bottom part with the keyboard gets in the way and they are too heavy to hold up to my face. The iOd Touch is light enough to hlod up for extended periods of time. The iPad is heavier than the iPhone, but nit nearly as cumbersome of heavy as a regular laptop.
Ad there aren’t photography snooks for laptops, I hope the iPad will open up that market.
The idea of a wide tablet computer capable of imaging a large-print touch-screen keyboard appeals to me. I’m not sure it will ever be an iPad, though. I’m not keen on Apple’s approach to control & DRM.
I agree with ou on the issue of DRM. But the iPad still is (or soon will be) the closest thing out there for an accessible eBook reader. If it offers eBook TTS, it will match and/or exceed everything the Kindle has to offer. With the open apps market, there is opportunity for developers to improve on and extend what Apple has begun.
Even if the iPad does not fulfill it full potential (which is unlikely anyway, it should jump start the next generation of devices. Amazon is already designing the next version of its Kindle with some of the iPad features. Hopefully more devices will incorporate its accessible feature set (large, color screen, light weight, detachable keyboard, built-in accessibility software like zoom and TTS and so on).
I love my iPad, and thought there would be loads of photo books available for it by now, but there really hasn’t been any. So I created an iPad photo book with the help of 28 photographers on Flickr, now available to be downloaded for free at http://www.learningthelight.com/2010/07/12/download-free-ipad-photo-book-mirror-mirror/
Photos just look so great on the fantastic iPad screen – I think there should be far more photo books available for it, and I’m sure they will come in time…