[Missouri-l] FW: Bias Against Blind Book Lovers - By Marc Maurer

[peter altschul]

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bal-op.blind14apr14
,0,2676
842.story
Bias against blind book lovers
By Marc Maurer
April 14, 2009

I love to read, and I've been doing it ever since I was able.  My 
wife is
also an avid reader.  But my wife and I are blind, and because I 
lead the
Baltimore-based National Federation of the Blind, we have many 
blind
friends.  And although many of us read everything we can get our 
hands
on, we can't get our hands on very much to read.

There are services for us, of course.  Government entities and 
nonprofit
organizations convert books into Braille, audio, or digital form 
for our
use.  But only 5 percent of all books published undergo such a
conversion.  A few more are available as commercial audio books, 
but
these are often abridged, and those that are unabridged are quite
expensive.

Nowadays, a solution to the problem of reading material is 
tantalizingly
within our reach: the e-book.  When Amazon released its new 
Kindle 2
e-book reader earlier this year, it announced that the device now
includes text-to-speech software and can read e-books aloud.  
Those of us
who are blind were filled with joy at this news.  For the first 
time in
history, it would now be possible, we hoped, for the blind to do
something that everyone else takes for granted:
purchase a brand new book and start reading it right away.

Our hope quickly turned to despair, however - and then to anger.  
The
Authors Guild doesn't want the Kindle 2 to be able to read books 
aloud.
They say this new capability violates authors' copyrights.  This 
argument
has absolutely no basis in copyright law.  Reading a print book 
aloud or
having it read aloud to you in the privacy of your home is not a
copyright violation; the only difference with the Kindle 2 is 
that a
machine rather than a human being is doing the reading.

In the face of this specious attack from the Authors Guild, 
Amazon
initially took the legally and morally correct position that the
text-to-speech feature of the Kindle 2 did not violate copyright 
law.
But then the company backed down, saying it would allow authors 
and
publishers to decide which books they would permit to be read 
aloud by
the device.  Dismayed, we contacted the Authors Guild.  It 
claimed it did
not oppose having e-books read aloud to the blind, as long as 
there was
a national registry of blind people who would then be allowed to 
unlock
the text-to-speech feature.

This is wrong.  The Authors Guild has no right to discriminate 
against
disabled readers by segregating us into a separate and unequal 
class.
If our sighted
friends don't have to "sign up" to be permitted to read, then 
blind
people shouldn't either.  And once we buy a book, how we read it 
is
nobody's business but ours.  When we told the Authors Guild this, 
they
added insult to injury by telling us that, if we wouldn't sign up 
for a
registry, we would just have to pay extra in order to use
text-to-speech.  Needless to say, this is outrageous and 
reprehensible
behavior from an organization of people who claim to support 
equal
access to literature by all Americans.  Instead of facilitating 
the free
flow of information, the Authors Guild is making itself the 
arbiter of
who is worthy of access to the printed word.

The Authors Guild isn't just discriminating against blind people.
People with other disabilities - especially brain injuries and
conditions like dyslexia
- would also benefit from the ability to have books read aloud to 
them
electronically.  Groups representing many of these people are 
joining us
to protest the position of the Authors Guild and Amazon's craven
response to it.

At present, very few of us buy books in any form.  If we could 
have
e-books read aloud to us, however, we would happily pay for them.  
We are
an untapped market consisting of some 15 million people to which 
authors
and publishers have never before had direct access.  For this 
reason, the
position of the Authors Guild is not only morally repugnant but 
also bad
business.
Prohibiting the blind and others from reading commercially 
available
e-books just means that authors and publishers won't get our 
money.  The
guild's position hurts both authors and people with print 
disabilities.

In an age when how we get information is constantly and rapidly
changing, it's important that people with disabilities have 
access to it
in the same way that it is important for us to have access to 
physical
structures, goods and services.  Amazon took an important step in 
the
right direction by including a read-aloud feature on the Kindle 
2, but
the Authors Guild is now trying to set us back.  We are not going 
to
allow them to stand in the doorway of the virtual bookstore to 
keep us
out.

Marc Maurer is president of the National Federation of the Blind.  
His
e-mail is officeofthepresident at nfb.org.


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