My Friends,
Please help me and so many others bring the privilege of mass media e-books and other printed material, currently enjoyed by Kindle owners, to those of us who see better with our minds and hearts than with our eyes.
Please Read! Then, Act!Â
The NFB is engaged in a campaign to obtain access for the blind and others with print disabilities to e-books available for Amazon’s new Kindle 2 e-book reader. The new reader, which Amazon is working to make fully accessible to the blind, has the ability to use text-to-speech to read these e-books aloud; but under pressure from the Authors Guild, Amazon has announced that authors and publishers will be allowed to disable the text-to-speech function. The National Federation of the Blind has joined with over twenty other organizations to create the Reading Rights Coalition, which has set up an on-line petition to urge the Authors Guild and Amazon to reverse course. Please read and sign the petition here: http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/We-Want-To-Read
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Please note: If you are using screen access technology, the first three fields on the form to sign the petition may not be announced. They are, in order: (1) a drop-down menu from which to select your prefix (Mr., Mrs., etc.); (2) an edit field for your first name, and (3) an edit field for your last name. The rest of the fields should announce themselves as you tab to them. If you still have trouble filling out the form, please send the following information to readingrights@nfb.org and we will be happy to sign on your behalf. You will need to send us your name, address, e-mail address, and any personal comments you would like to make about this issue. Thank you so much for your participation in this critically important effort.
