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	<title>tim o'brien photos &#187; pdf</title>
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	<description>A blind photographer's exploration of his vision through photography and accessibility.</description>
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		<title>Accessing the New Kindle DX</title>
		<link>http://www.timobrienphotos.com/2009/05/new-kindle-dx/</link>
		<comments>http://www.timobrienphotos.com/2009/05/new-kindle-dx/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 06 May 2009 20:44:15 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Tim</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[large print]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[accessibility]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[amazon]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[E-Book]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[electronic displays]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[font sizes]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[fonts]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[image zoom]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[kindle]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[pdf]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[pdf support]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[reading]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[review]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[tts]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[visually impaired]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.timobrienphotos.com/?p=2705</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I garnered some First Impressions of the New Kindle DX from the NYTimes&#8217;s Gadgetwise Blog. According to the post, the new Kindle DX&#8216;s main feature is its larger size. The DX has a 9.7-inch display, which the company says is 2 1/2 times the size of the Kindle 2. But the device doesn’t feel or look as large as a sheet of copier paper. It won’t give you the feeling of reading an entire page of a newspaper. You read the paper by flipping through it, article by article. With a price tag just south of $500, this e-book reader ought to have some bang for these big bucks. The larger screen is great, but what does this mean for the visually impaired? The Kindle already comes with a hobbled text to speech function and a narrow choic of font sizes. Rumors have it that Amazon engineers are looking at adding an audio interface option. Digging a little deeper on the Kindle DX s web site, I found a list of the DX&#8217;s fetures that might be useful for the visually imapired. Auto-Rotating Screen By simply turning the device, you can immediately see full-width landscape views of maps, graphs, tables [...]]]></description>
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		<title>Accessing Product Manuals: Go PDF</title>
		<link>http://www.timobrienphotos.com/2009/05/accessing-product-manuals-go-pdf/</link>
		<comments>http://www.timobrienphotos.com/2009/05/accessing-product-manuals-go-pdf/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 01 May 2009 14:42:31 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Tim</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[large print]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[accessibility]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[google]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[manuals]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[model number]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[pdf]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[tip]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.timobrienphotos.com/?p=2004</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Product manuals are frustrating. For, as my dad puts it, they are usually written in a language tantalizingly close to English. Just as irritating, manuals are often printed in tiny font sizes, making them very inaccessible. A few years ago, I was looking for a misplaced manual in vain. So I went on the web to see if I could find a copy online. I struck gold. Most manufacturers offer manuals on their web sites for current and recently discontinued products. For those not offered by the manufacturer, there are a grassroots efforts  to scan and upload lost manuals. The internet has become, in part, a product manual archive. Why is this accessible? As annoying as PDFs can be for the visually impaired, they are far more accessible that their hard copy counterparts (especially the misplaces ones). First of all, PDFs can be zoomed. If created correctly, the color scheme can be inverted and the text can be read aloud. If they are simply a scan, most can be successfully run through OCR and turned into a text document (however mangled). There is not much to be done with the reliance of manuals on diagrams. What is the best way [...]]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>2</slash:comments>
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		<title>Pogue Asks: Why Are PDFs Still in Portrait Orientation?</title>
		<link>http://www.timobrienphotos.com/2009/03/pogue-asks-why-are-pdfs-still-in-portrait-orientation/</link>
		<comments>http://www.timobrienphotos.com/2009/03/pogue-asks-why-are-pdfs-still-in-portrait-orientation/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 30 Mar 2009 19:02:15 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Tim</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[large print]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[blogs]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ebook]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[idea]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[layout]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[monitors]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[nyt]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[nytimes]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[open office]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[pdf]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[pogue]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[portrait]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[portrait mode]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.timobrienphotos.com/?p=2535</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[In today&#8217;s Pogue’s Posts Blog, Pogue repeats a question from one of his readers; &#8220;Why Are PDFs Still in Portrait Orientation?&#8221; It is a question tha t I have been asking for a while not, but one for which I offer a better solution: reflow is better than landscape. Why Are PDFs Still in Portrait Orientation? From today’s mailbag: Hi Dave! Since you’ve been writing about pet peeves recently, here’s one of mine: Why are PDF documents still mostly in portrait instead of landscape orientation? Be it eBooks, user guides for software, or anything else that is clearly intended to be viewed mainly on screen, it mostly comes in vertical orientation, requiring a lot of zooming in and out, plus some extra scrolling (if you don’t have one of those fancy pivot monitors, that is). I suppose it’s mostly because programs like Word, InDesign, etc. initially come up with this page orientation because it’s what we’re used to; when it gets printed, it’s mostly in portrait mode. But… who prints that kind of stuff anymore? Most of the PDFs I read never end up on paper, so it would make sense if electronic documentation came in landscape orientation. Wouldn’t it? [...]]]></description>
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		<title>Slashdot &#124; Author&#8217;s Guild Says Kindle&#8217;s Text-To-Speech Software Illegal</title>
		<link>http://www.timobrienphotos.com/2009/02/slashdot-authors-guild-says-kindles-text-to-speech-software-illegal/</link>
		<comments>http://www.timobrienphotos.com/2009/02/slashdot-authors-guild-says-kindles-text-to-speech-software-illegal/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 11 Feb 2009 16:14:43 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Tim</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[large print]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[accessibility]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[amazon]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[article]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[audible]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[audio]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[books]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[copyright infringement]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[copyright protection]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[digital rights management]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[DRM]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[electronic books]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[itunes]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[library of congress]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[music industry]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[narrators]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[pdf]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[reading]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[text]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[text to speech]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[text to speech software]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.timobrienphotos.com/?p=1578</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Spotted on Slashdot, Author&#8217;s Guild Says Kindle&#8217;s Text-To-Speech Software Illegal. &#8220;The Author&#8217;s Guild claims that the new Kindle&#8217;s text-to-speech software is illegal, stating that &#8220;They don&#8217;t have the right to read a book out loud,&#8221; said Paul Aiken, executive director of the Authors Guild. &#8220;That&#8217;s an audio right, which is derivative under copyright law.&#8221; Forget for a moment that text-to-speech doesn&#8217;t copy an existing work. And forget the odd notion that the artificial enunciation of plain text is equivalent to a person&#8217;s nuanced and emotive reading. The Guild&#8217;s claim is that even to read out loud is a production akin to an illegal copy, or a public performance.&#8221; why is there such a conflict between accessibility and copyright? It seems to me the lot of accessibility issues are a side effect of copyright protection. Digital rights management, (DRM), as always impeded the flow of accessible information. The Library of Congress has thousands of volumes of text in audio format, but does not release it digitally because of fears of copyright infringement. Publishers are afraid of accessible electronic books in open formats, such as PDF, for the same reason. The music industry seems ready to abandon DRM. Apple&#8217;s iTunes has begun [...]]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>4</slash:comments>
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		<title>DRM, the Public Domain and Accessiblity</title>
		<link>http://www.timobrienphotos.com/2008/12/drm-the-public-domain-and-accessiblity/</link>
		<comments>http://www.timobrienphotos.com/2008/12/drm-the-public-domain-and-accessiblity/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 18 Dec 2008 11:18:30 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Tim</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[large print]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[accessibility]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[DRM]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[pdf]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.timobrienphotos.com/?p=1221</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The Blind Flaneur makes an important point in a recent blog post, Preserving the Future’s Creative Raw Material in the Public Domain. These days, authors and musicians protect their work online using Digital Rights Managment (DRM). DRM, however, almost always makes the content being protected inaccessible to the visually impaired. DRM is not inherently designed to block disabled users, but the implementations often effectively cut blind users off. DRM-protected content is restricted to software that can ensure that the content is not used inappropriately. Restricting the file format of the content may not allow blind users to access that content in accessible software. As the Blind Flaneur points out, James Boyle has released his new book The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind, both in traditional paper format and as a freely accessible PDF file in the public domain. By not restricting the electronic version of his text, Boyle makes this book easily accessible to blind readers. PDF is not a panacea. Only in the last few years has the tagged PDF format, which is the accessible version of the format, allowing relfowing for natural reading of enlarged text as well as access by screen readers, become available. [...]]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>2</slash:comments>
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