National Federation for the Blind protest at Authors Guild in NYC today over Kindle text-to-speech

The Reading Rights Coalition and the National Federation for the Blind are staging a protest in New York today (Tuesday) at the offices of the Authors Guild, to let the Guild know that their successful campaign to remove the text-to-speech feature from the Kindle has hurt blind people and undermined their ability to access a wide variety of works in a more-accessible form.

The Authors Guild argued that the text-to-speech feature in the Kindle violated their copyrights, saying that the private use of a file-conversion feature infringed the "performance right" in copyright, and that it was illegal for Amazon to make devices that could be used to infringe copyright, even if they could also be used in non-infringing ways. Neither of these premises stand up to legal scrutiny, but Amazon withdrew the feature anyway -- now, text-to-speech works only on books that have it switched on.

The Authors Guild has gone on record saying that this has nothing to do with blind people (who have a statutory right to transform books to "assistive formats") because the Kindle's touchscreen wouldn't work for totally blind people.

This is nonsense, and I assume the AG knows it.

First, because "legally blind" is not the same as "totally blind." Indeed, the Kindle's ability to dynamically resize text makes it a natural for readers with limited vision, and it's entirely likely that a disproportionate number of Kindle owners are legally blind.

Second, and most importantly: even if the Kindle had a big, Braille, "I AM BLIND READ EVERYTHING ALOUD TO ME" button (thus rendering all its text accessible to even legally blind people), the Authors Guild's legal theories would still prohibit its production.

Under the theory that any devices that can convert text to audio is illegal if it's possible that some of those texts aren't "licensed for text-to-speech conversion," then no device that can convert arbitrary ebooks to audio will ever be legal.

Sorry, blind people, guess you're out of luck.

The Reading Rights Coalition, which represents people who cannot read print, will protest the threatened removal of the text-to-speech function from e-books for the Amazon Kindle 2 outside the Authors Guild headquarters in New York City at 31 East 32nd Street on April 7, 2009, from noon to 2:00 p.m. The coalition includes the blind, people with dyslexia, people with learning or processing issues, seniors losing vision, people with spinal cord injuries, people recovering from strokes, and many others for whom the addition of text-to-speech on the Kindle 2 promised for the first time easy, mainstream access to over 255,000 books.

Reading Rights Coalition Urges Authors to Allow Everyone Access to E-books

Previously:

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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wackyvorlon

I think it behooves authors to speak out against the odious action of the Authors Guild. This does not make any author look good. It makes all authors appear petty and greedy, and unwilling to sell their books to the blind for no better reason than the fact that those people are blind.
Anonymous

Just as banks have proven that the poor and desperate are a valuable resource to be mined for usurious interest rates and fees, the Author’s Guild is fighting for their right to make money off the disabled.
Cory Doctorow

“I imagine accommodations could be made with special kindles that could unlock any book for text to speech only available to people who are legally blind.”

Sally, that’s a fertile imagination you’ve got there. Unfortunately, this is the polar opposite of what blind people have gotten to date and what’s on the table for them to get in future.
Brainspore

This is a worthy cause and an important civil rights issue. So why was the first thing that came to my mind “Will the blind people be carrying picket signs, and if so how will they know what they say?”
Anonymous

LOL… well they can always do what I have done… buy a mac… it will read to you and has a lot better voice…

This should be a disability freedom act ruling… and we need to over-through the Disney conspiracy… after all that’s where it all started… Disney wanted to own the rights for Mickey Mouse forever… so put Mickey in public domain and get back our human rights…
mattofdoom

Here in the UK we’ve got a big national library full of audio-books and braille epically for the blind, with local charities and councils often facilitating easier access.

Of course, the local library will also stock some audio books, order in others at request, waive fines for blind people, and deliver the books to their door using the mobile library van, where possible.

We also have a few other useful national schemes for blind people, such as free postage of parcels, so heavy braille can be sent and received without paying an arm and a leg.

Of course, what the Kindle would have offered is extra convenience and a wider range of access, if it ever comes to the UK, that is.
Lars

My dad is blind and I have yet to find a device (well, maybe the iPhone) that I couldn’t in some way break down for him into “press this, up up, left” kind of instructions.

The Kindle 2 has controls and no touch function? So that means if it has some logical menu/software lay-out (which, funnily enough, sighted people appreciate as well) it can ben dictated and remembered.

My dad makes notes with his braille typewriter, but mainly for reference until the structure is in his ‘mental map’.

The Authors Guild is full of it, frankly. A computer rendition of a book is not a ‘performance’, it’s simply a different form of mechanised or digital output.

Now, Stephen Fry doing audiobooks on Wilde or the Harry Potter series. That’s a perfomance.

Sadly, all the above is useless chatter since Amazon doesn’t sell the Kindle in my country.
Michelle

I really don’t think anyone is actually worried about the blind people on this. Its a nice idea but I really get the feeling that people are just looking for a convenient cause to rally around.

Well, the blind people are. And the spinal cord injured/physically disabled (that would be me. Hi!). And the dyslexics. And…

It is in everyone’s interest to allow blind and disabled people unfettered access to reading material. It can only improve our literacy, access to higher education and job prospects, thus reducing the drain on public funds. Currently volunteers scan and OCR books for conversion into accessible formats through organizations like BookShare. I’m not knocking their efforts, but it can take a while to get a book you request (or it might never be made available at all), errors might be introduced in the OCR process, pagination might be lost, etc. This makes it very difficult for students with disabilities in mainstream educational settings.

I imagine accommodations could be made with special kindles that could unlock any book for text to speech only available to people who are legally blind.

Which would no doubt be priced three times higher then the regular Kindle, lag behind in other features, be unusable with other people’s computer systems, require paperwork/approval from doctors or government agencies to buy one, etc.

Here’s a novel idea: why can’t we have gadgets that everyone can use by turning on the features most appropriate for them? Non-disabled people should be agitating for this too: your gadget would still be available to you should you have a sudden temporary disability, or want to use it in the dark or something.

We can do this! WE HAVE THE TECHNOLOGY.

The could also make them huge and ugly so that no one who could easily see would buy/steal one. Or they could do what Steven King did and make them pink.

My apologies. I didn’t realize you were already an assistive techhnology designer. ;)
Anonymous

What I dislike immensely about the Kindle is that its name brings to mind, you know….

…book burnings.
Moon

Gadgets123 – I am not sure of what your point is. Were the people in wheelchairs (and their supporters) whinny victims because they couldn’t cross the street? Did they protest about the small lip modification that made the curbs safe and usable for everyone? Is there some reason why you believe “Muslim” is a language? Or did you just want to show that you are an ass?
Anonymous

Surely somewhere out there someone has the technical knowledge to switch the feature back on. These things must be hackable.
Roy Trumbull

I believe the organizations name is National Federation of the Blind. It is in fact run by the blind themselves.
A person born blind or who loses sight at an early age is liable to learn Braile with some facility. Older people may not acquire the ability. In either case you are limited to whatever is published in Braile.
Audio books are available from the Library of Congress and from such volunteer web sites as libravox. To a large extent much of what is available is in the public domain. Some of the books at Gutenberg.org are human or machine read. Getting current books and periodicals is hit or miss. That is where the speech feature of the Kindle et al would be valuable.
There are limits to robot speech, as I call it. Throw in enough foreign names and vocabulary and the robot is in big trouble.
A good lawyer or volunteer group could make quick hash of the attempts to limit machine speech. Any move that excludes a segment of the population rarely survives in the courts.
Brainspore

I believe the organizations name is National Federation of the Blind. It is in fact run by the blind themselves.

So it’s literally the blind leading the blind?
[*rim shot*]

(But seriously, give these guys their Kindles. My grandmother is legally blind and I’m sure she’d love something like that.)
Anonymous

But there is no “performance right.” There is a “public performance right.”
jso

#1 BRAINSPORE: I was going to write a very similar comment. Basically, my first reaction to any situation is to see if I can find humor in it, but this too important to be funny at their cost.

#3 LARS: I don’t have a kindle, but I was told that the TTS features involved sight to get to, but according to you that isn’t an issue. Thanks for clearing that up for me.
bililoquy

From Roy Blount Jr’s NYTimes article:

In fact, publishers, authors and American copyright laws have long provided for free audio availability to the blind…

Is this not true, then?
Cory Doctorow

@5: Yes, it’s true — but the audio editions available to the blind are limited to those that have been produced by volunteers, which is a subset of all books that the Kindle might have read to them. Indeed, the same statutory protection that extends to the volunteers who produce specialized editions for blind readers should also cover the Kindle.
Kieran O’Neill

Is there a list of Authors Guild members somewhere, so we can boycott their books?
bililoquy

I would again respectfully submit that no special hardware is necessary here: TTS-unlocked files may simply be made available to the disabled.

Problem solved.

That, of course, is assuming that there will be a problem to begin with. I — like Amazon! — believe you’re going to find that the vast majority of ebooks remain TTS-unlocked. Like they are right now.
bililoquy

The obvious solution is for TTS-enabled ebooks to be made available upon request to the disabled. (FWIW, I doubt that very many blind folks use or will use a Kindle at all, but their needs are easy to accommodate here.)

This is so obvious that I suspect it’s what will happen — especially given the pressure from the Coalition. Further needless conflict between two well-intentioned advocacy groups would be unfortunate.
zoetrope

An irrelevant interjection but, I love text-to-speech software and I love using Sprints IP Relay for absurd reasons.
sally599

I really don’t think anyone is actually worried about the blind people on this. Its a nice idea but I really get the feeling that people are just looking for a convenient cause to rally around. I imagine accommodations could be made with special kindles that could unlock any book for text to speech only available to people who are legally blind. The could also make them huge and ugly so that no one who could easily see would buy/steal one. Or they could do what Steven King did and make them pink.

Second does anyone know how many books have actually been locked if any?