LD Resources

Amazon lets publishers and writers disable Kindle 2′s read-aloud feature

Publishers and authors now have the power to silence the Kindle 2 e-book reader.

Amazon.com Inc. reversed course Friday on the device’s controversial text-to-speech feature, which reads digital books aloud in a robotic voice. The company gave rights holders the ability to disable the feature for individual titles.

This remains a fascinating case which has implications for the disabilities community. I think the publishers would lose if it went to trial and that Amazon could prevail but no doubt some publishers would pull out of the deals they have with Amazon letting Amazon publish their books in this form and that ultimately would hurt Amazon and readers.

I wish the publishers and authors would think of this feature less as a replacement for digital audio books and more as a feature that allows a wider audience to enjoy their books, an audience who might not buy a book otherwise. With this feature enabled a person who is blind or who can’t read can have complete access to the same books that everyone else is reading. And, don’t forget that one still has to purchase the book to have the Kindle 2 read it. This amounts to nothing more than greed.