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.

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…

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.

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.

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. ;)

…book burnings.

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.)

#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.

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

Is this not true, then?

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.

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.

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