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The Struggle for Book Access: Amazon (Blog Post #2)

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

But, it's a dream that the commercial ebook vendors keep dashing. But, we just saw Amazon fold when the Authors Guild pushed them to turn off the voice of these books: Amazon to flip on Kindle. We have an action by Amazon that sets back years of work to make ebooks accessible. The Textbook problem.

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Objecting to Accessibility Weaseling

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

Last week, the National Federation of the Blind and 22 organizations serving people with disabilities filed detailed objections to a petition from a group of makers of e-reader devices led by Amazon to be exempted from accessibility requirements under the relatively new Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act.

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Technological Protection Measures and the Blind

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

This has created the ironic situation where blind people, who because of their disability require access to digital copies, have been effectively locked out of purchasing ebooks for the last decade. Textbooks in IDEA, the United States K-12 special education law The issue of TPMs is the biggest future-proofing question in the Treaty.

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On the Future of Braille: Thoughts by Radical Braille Advocates

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

federal law supports braille instruction. The increasing focus on digital content, rather than its printed form, and the shift to electronic distribution of ebooks pave new avenues for removing the barriers to accessibility. Accordingly, U.S. In this sense, you could say that we are radical braille advocates.

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Bookshare Celebrates Its 10th Anniversary at Google

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

Betsy Beaumon, Benetech VP and General Manager of Bookshare During the event, our Bookshare staff offered demos of our Bookshare library and our Go Read accessible ebook reader for Android. They also demoed Read2Go, the accessible ebook application for the Apple OS and Route 66 Literacy, Benetech’s online literacy instructional program.

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Fascinating Meeting at the Copyright Office

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

We discussed Chafee, especially in the context of the Amazon text-to-speech brouhaha, and the proposed international treaty that was tabled at the WIPO SCCR meeting in Geneva last month. copyright exemption for serving the print disabled is commonly called the Chafee Amendment: Section 121 of copyright law. copyright law.

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Benetech: the Equilibrium Change Machine

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

The first was the ebook. Fundamentally, the Arkenstone Reader allowed blind people to create their own personal ebook as a text file that could be read in something like Microsoft Word. These formats now underpin the ebook industry of today. The Bookshare breakthrough depended on three innovations. Fast forward to today.

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