Well Peter, it is a big deal in the area of some eBooks. Once the
effects of this change kick in and some developers begin creating
applications to allow books from inaccessible sellers to become
accessible, then the potential of access to all eBooks becomes
possible. Where the writer erred was in applying this to Apple who
have already made their eBooks accessible. What the change really
does is help us out in areas such as the Author's Guild bullying
Amazon into making accessibility optional for publishers, allowing
them to turn it off in their books if they want to. Now, even if
Amazon still allows this, some third party person can create an
application that cuts through the Kindle DRM to allow access anyway.
This will apply to any other eBook distributor as well, but since
Apple and Amazon have the biggest libraries and Apple is committed to
accessibility, the Kindle library is the one where this could have
the largest effect. If there was a Kindle app for the iPhone that
made all Kindle books accessible to the VoiceOver function, suddenly
the iPhone, iPad and Ipod Touch become the devices with the largest
library of accessible eBooks available.
Also, and this one applies to Apple as well, manufacturers of book
players for the blind could add functionality to their devices that
would allow users to add eBooks protected by DRM to their devices and
have them read by the devices reader. This is something Apple is
likely not happy about, but under the new rules, it would be
perfectly legal since the breaking of the proprietary DRM is for the
purposes of accessibility. Thus GW Micro and all of the other
manufacturers of book readers could, with some effort at development,
make their devices able to have access to the same vast library of
eBooks as the iPhone and its fellow Apple devices. This is the area
where GW Micro could really benefit themselves and their customers
under the new rules.
Regards,
Chris
At 03:33 PM 7/27/2010, Tactile Display wrote:
Thanks to all who responded to my message. I guess the AJC staffer
missed the point. The article made a big deal of the fact that blind
users now could use e-book apps.
Thanks for the enlightment, Peter Duran
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