Amazon, Why Do You Keep Burning Blind Readers?
Submitted by cvangerven on Fri, 12/07/2012 – 13:00
Blog Date:
Friday, December 7, 2012
By Amy Mason

According to ZDNet and Engadget the Kindle Fire will be getting Explore by
Touch and Voice Guide to provide
accessibility features to blind and visually impaired customers.
These features were first introduced in Google’s Android, Ice Cream Sandwich
operating system. (This is the basis of the OS for the Kindle Fire and Fire HD
which has been heavily skinned by Amazon for the device.) Google has since
released Jelly Bean which has improved markedly on accessibility. If this
were Amazon’s only weakness,
an out-of-date OS, I would be disappointed, but I would understand. This is
not, however, Amazon’s only problem.
Their weakness instead, appears to be a disregard for the wishes of its blind
consumers.
Blind people want Kindle books. We want them badly enough that I know several
blind people who have chosen to buy the Kindle Keyboard, despite being unable
to do anything more than start and stop text-to-speech on their books. The
PC edition (with accessibility plug-in) is slightly better. If a user is
willing to sit at a PC, they can read by navigational elements as small as a
sentence at a time, and as large as a page (seriously, you have to sit at the
computer and turn every page. What a thrilling way to read a book!)
I hear a few of you saying, “Ok, Amy, so you are upset about the past, but now
Amazon is offering this additional accessibility in the Fire”. I am sorry to
disappoint
you, but for all intents and purposes it did not improve on their existing efforts.
We purchased a Kindle Fire HD, and received it last Friday. We read on
Amazon’s website that there were accessibility features, so we felt that we
had to do our due diligence and test their work. First of all, when you get
the device,
you have to have a sighted person turn on the accessibility features because
there is no way for a blind person to turn them on independently.
Secondly, access is limited to the device settings, the collection of books in
a user’s library, the primary navigation buttons (back, home, and more) and
allowing you to start and stop text-to-speech on a book. A sighted reader on
this tablet has the capability to browse the Web, play music, play audio
books, download and read magazines and newspapers, buy Android apps, read
e-mail, view documents (this ay be accessible, I didn’t get a chance to check),
browse photos, voice chat, and read books. We are limited to access to the
settings, navigating our library, and using the digitized speech equivalent of
a cassette tape. We can play and pause speech, and it will read continuously,
just like on the Kindle Keyboard, but we cannot navigate accessibly. No
headings, paragraphs, pages, sentences, words or characters can be
distinguished, nor can you go back accessibly. Tables of contents and social
media integration are likewise unavailable to blind users.
We were concerned by these conclusions, and decided that perhaps we were
missing some details, so we called the company. (Accessibility was a very
small part of the help page after all.) We spoke with two different customer
service reps, and indeed, the reps verified that yes, this is the extent of
the accessibility of the device.
It is hard to see the accessibility features in the Kindle Fire as a gesture
of goodwill.
Amazon is familiar enough with what true accessibility looks like, both
directly from us, from the work their competition has done, and even from the
screen access packages it requires to allow a PC user to read with text to
speech on a computer.
It cannot claim ignorance when Google, Apple, and Microsoft all offer far more
accessible devices (they all have their problems, but let’s be honest, these
guys are all making a legitimate effort.). Furthermore, both the iPad and the
Nexus 7 are confirmed to offer accessible eReaders from other creators (several
of which can be used with Braille) while no access to Kindle books is available on any of these platforms.
Amazon needs to stop burning blind readers with these half-hearted attempts at
accessibility in all versions of the Kindle, including the Fire. What is
needed now is for it to implement real accessibility, rather than expecting
blind readers to accept a cassette tape equivalent in an era of multi-purpose
tablets.