Kindle accessibility for blind users

Transcription

1 Kindle accessibility for blind users Emily Mehlenbacher Abstract: Amazon has earned both commendation and condemnation from blind users for accessibility of various Kindle versions. Universities that were doing a pilot study of using Kindles for textbooks were even sued because of the inaccessibility. This paper seeks to examine where Amazon went wrong, what makes a device accessible, and how that can be achieved. Why would a blind user want an e-reader? At first, an e-reader for a blind user seems silly they can't see the screen, and the technology for electronic braille screens is just not there yet. When you consider the other uses of an e-reader, though, it makes perfect sense. It's a small, lightweight device with audio capabilities, screen reader software already installed, and the ability to download books quickly and easily. It can store a number of books for later reading whenever and wherever, without the hassle of large braille books, many CDs, or a CD or MP3 player. It offers a blind person many of the same benefits as a sighted person, just a little differently. Kindle history Amazon's Kindle has gone through a number of iterations, resulting in about 7 variations. The first generation of Kindle was released November 19, 2007 for $399. It was a fairly basic device, with a 6" black and white e-ink screen, and 250 MB of internal memory, expandable via an SD slot. The second generation came out February 23, 2009 for $359, adding a text-to-speech feature and more internal memory, but removing the SD slot. The Kindle DX became available January 19, 2010, featuring a larger screen and an accelerometer, and was marketed as being more suitable for newspapers and textbooks. It had a larger price to go with the larger screen, and was not very popular. The third generation Kindle Keyboard, as one would guess, sports a tiny keyboard. It also has a higher contrast and faster refresh rate e-ink screen. This model was available August 27, 2010 in 2 versions: one with wi-fi only ($139) and one with wi-fi and 3G capability ($189). Amazon's Whispernet 3G is quite nice the device gets 3G service globally, at no cost to the user beyond the initial $50 more than the wi-fi model. A few months later, Amazon added 2 more versions of the Kindle Keyboard, with price reductions made possible by displaying ads when turned off, and on the home screen. This new Kindle with "Special Offers" dropped the cost to $114 and $139 for wi-fi and 3G respectively. Most recently released is the fourth generation, consisting of the Kindle, Kindle Touch, and Kindle Fire. The Kindle and Kindle Touch continue to have ad-supported and not versions, and are slightly smaller and lighter than previous generations. This Kindle is even more stripped

2 down than previous generations, with no 3G, no speakers, and no headphone jack, but a stripped down price as well. The Kindle Touch has a touchscreen and audio capabilities, but is otherwise very similar to the basic Kindle. The Kindle Fire, however, is completely unlike all previous Kindles it is an Android tablet with a color multitouch screen, not the e-ink of all other models. One of the advantages of e-ink screens is that they don't refresh constantly, and so take very little power to run, resulting in very extensive battery life. Because of this, the battery life of the Fire suffers greatly compared to the other models: 8 hours, versus the 2 months projected for the Kindle Touch [5]. Kindle accessibility In 2009, several universities were doing a pilot project using Kindle DXs for electronic textbook distribution. The Kindle DX does have text-to-speech for books it does not, however, have text-to-speech for menus. As such, a blind student would require assistance to navigate the Kindle, but once someone else had helped them open the textbook, they could read it. The National Federation of the Blind and the American Council of the Blind filed a lawsuit against Arizona State University, and registered complaints against 5 other schools contemplating using Kindles for textbooks[3]. A year later, though, Amazon revealed the third generation Kindle, which would have a voice guide to allow blind users to navigate menus. The National Federation of the Blind formally commended Amazon for this increase in accessibility in a press release July 29, 2010 [2]. There is no telling whether the lawsuit of 2009 had anything to do with this advancement, but one would hope that Amazon took notice when threatened with the loss of a major sales opportunity. According to several reviews by blind users, though, it requires sighted assistance to turn on this feature, and the user is still unable to navigate within a text, meaning you have to listen to the whole thing straight through [4]. The American Council of the Blind was not pleased with the announcement of the Kindle Fire, however, and the lack of built-in accessibility, saying things like "Amazon's blatant disregard for the blind consumer demonstrates a profound arrogance and represents technological discrimination against our community," and "I am forced to conclude that Amazon simply does not care about the blind community. [1]" What makes for good accessibility in an e-reader? There are a few key things that make or break accessibility in an e-reader. As can be seen from the 2009 lawsuit against Arizona State University, navigability is important. The device is absolutely useless if the user can't open, find, or buy books. Since the retail price of the Kindle Fire is $199 and estimated production costs from $150 to over $200, it's very important for Amazon to be able to sell content to all of their customers. Secondly, text-to-speech. Once the user has navigated to a book, they have to be able to read it. Text-to-speech is not, perhaps, the best way to convey information, since it can be inaccurate and distractingly robotic, but it's fast and convenient. Since Amazon allows authors and publishers to disable text-to-speech on their content, though, it may not be the most reliable at the moment. Also important is genuine audiobooks. Text-to-speech may be the quick and dirty way to get information across, but nothing beats real people for timing and pronunciation. In my

3 experience, it's a lot nicer to listen to a person read something, but audiobooks can be quite expensive. For example, on Amazon it costs $23.36 to purchase the audiobook of Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games, the #3 bestselling book on CD on Amazon but a print copy will run you only $7.79. For the cost of the audiobook of the first in the series, you could buy a paperback boxed set of the whole trilogy. Clearly labeled physical buttons would also be nice for a blind user; the prevalence of touchscreens and virtual keyboards doesn't do much good for the visually impaired. Physical buttons have a consistent location, and give physical feedback when pressed. All of these goals work together toward the most important one independence. The blind user should be able to fully utilize the device, without requiring a sighted assistant. It's absolutely essential that they be able to go about their daily lives without requiring help for something as simple as reading a book. How can we achieve that? In order to be completely accessible, a new Kindle would have to be completely rebuilt from the ground up. For that matter, though, you might as well just not bother with the screen, and make a blind edition Kindle that's just speakers, some buttons, a headphone jack, and the computer innards. It is unlikely that Amazon would be willing to do that, as it does not make good business sense to make a product specifically for a small market share when they could just as easily make a few tweaks to the existing model. So here I'll lay out what we'll call the Kindle Accessibility Expansion Pack some modifications, both software and hardware that could theoretically be applied to an existing Kindle, that would go a long way to making a Kindle more accessible according to the guidelines laid out above. I am largely ignoring the Kindle Fire because it's unlike all the others and has a lot of features that aren't really important to a blind person anyway, such as the color screen. Of the currently available models, that leaves the basic Kindle, which lacks any audio capabilities whatsoever, Kindle Touch, Kindle Keyboard, and Kindle Keyboard DX. The Kindle is right out for lack of audio, and the touchscreen, being such an inherently visual interface, doesn't benefit a blind user much. The larger screen of the DX might be useful for a visually impaired person who could read highly magnified texts, but other than that it seems to be a much higher cost and not much else. This leaves us the previous generation's Kindle Keyboard. The physical keyboard is much easier to use than a virtual keyboard for a blind user, and personally, easier for a sighted user too. Navigability, text-to-speech, and audiobooks are all present, just perhaps not ideal. Physical buttons are also there, but they seem to all be smooth-faced good for design, not so good for distinguishing them. The requirement of someone else to activate the voice guide, although it's just necessary at initial setup, is not good for independence. The Accessibility Expansion Pack will, then, attempt to improve these areas. Stickers with raised symbols will help the buttons be more distinct the buttons are really too small to have braille in a readable size, but once the locations and purposes are learned, the stickers will simply aid in recognizing them. The stickers could wear off or down with extensive use, but would not be terribly difficult or expensive to replace. They could, however, be difficult to apply. For that reason, stickers would only be for the navigation buttons and perhaps the F and J keys, like on standard keyboards, rather than all of the buttons.

4 It would be hard to improve navigability just through hardware, so perhaps the Accessibility Expansion Pack could include an expanded voice guide, allowing a blind user to utilize more features of the Kindle than they could previously. A blind user's review of the Kindle Keyboard specifically states that the Kindle Store cannot be accessed by a blind user from the Kindle [4] this is something that it seems would be fairly simple to add, and would greatly enhance the accessibility of the device, and eliminate the need for a computer to purchase content from. In order to have a blind user activate the voice guide themselves, either the activation method needs to change, or a keyboard shortcut or something is added. Without modifying the device, though, it seems that it would be fairly simple to set up a toll-free number with automated directions the directions would have to be very simple, along the lines of press down three times, and then select, and could go wrong pretty easily, but would help people who don't have or want a sighted person to help them out. Text-to-speech isn't something that can easily be upgraded without advances in technology, so the Accessibility Expansion Pack in this area would pretty much have to consist of a promise that as the software improves, updates will be available to blind users. One improvement that could be made fairly simply, or at least it seems like it would be simple, is to allow navigation within a text, using text-to-speech. I assume there is a cursor of some sort, keeping track of the reading position allowing the user to move it seems quite basic. This is important because there are some books for which listening to it straight through is inappropriate or unnecessary, such as manuals and textbooks. Audiobooks, too, cannot simply be upgraded. The quantity and cost of audiobooks, however, is improvable. This cannot be done to the device, and so has no part in the Accessibility Expansion Pack, but Fortunately, there are organizations such as LibriVox [6], which seeks to record public domain books a chapter at a time with volunteers, and make them available for free. It can be disconcerting as a listener to have a different person reading each chapter, but it's an improvement over sometimes-robotic text-to-speech. Overall, it's hard to say how easy it would be to make the Kindle Accessibility Expansion Pack real, or how useful it would be. It does address a lot of accessibility concerns, but without talking to blind Kindle users about their experiences and having them try out the Accessibility Expansion Pack, it lacks real world applicability. Sources [1] "American Council of the Blind Denounces the Introduction of Amazon's Inaccessible Kindle Fire." PR Newswire 7 Oct Academic OneFile. Web. 26 Feb [2] "National Federation of the Blind Commends Amazon on Unveiling of New Accessible Kindle." PR Newswire 29 July Academic OneFile. Web. 26 Feb [3] Press Release: Lawsuit against Arizona State and complaints against Princeton, Reed, Pace, Darden School of Business and Case Western. 26 June Reading Rights Coalition. 26 Feb < >

5 [4] Enger, Ricky. An Accessibility Review of The Amazon Kindle Sept Feb < > [5] Amazon Kindle. Wikipedia. 27 Feb < > [6] LibriVox. <