Friday, December 7, 2012

Advocates for the Blind Plan Protest of Amazon's Kindle

By Nirvi Shah from On Special Education
from guest blogger Sean Cavanah


Advocates for the blind are arguing that an electronic reading device, the Amazon Kindle, is inaccessible to visually impaired students, and the organization is planning a protest at the company's headquarters to deliver that message in person.
The National Federation of the Blind says Amazon is making a "massive effort to deploy Kindle e-readers and Kindle books" in K-12 schools, and the organization has urged the public to write to the company's founder and chief executive officer, Jeff Bezos, to reiterate their complaints about those products.

The federation has taken issue with the Kindle for several years. The heart of the organization's criticism is that neither Kindle devices nor the "book files" used with them are accessible to blind students. The book files can't be read without various software applications that also present barriers to blind students, Chris Danielsen, a spokesman for the federation, told Education Week.

Read more HERE.

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