Is Amazon Being Discriminatory with Kindle?

Amazon has had its share of troubles with publishers, authors, schools, and anyone in between. Every gadget has these issues. But Amazon does get a lot of flak for things its device is not designed to do. Kindle is a decent e-book reader, and while it’s designed to give its owners the ability to read books at home and on the go without having to rely on paper-books, it wasn’t designed for the blind. It’s true that gadget makers have to take into account people who are handicapped or disabled, but is there anything that Amazon can do to make things easier for blind students hoping to use a Kindle?

The National Federation of the Blind is planning to announce Wednesday that the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Syracuse won’t be taking advantage of Amazon Kindle in mass scale due to the device not being accessible to blind students. It’s a noble approach. The last thing you want to do is discriminate against the blind. But Amazon did offer a solution for these students to help them enjoy their books on Amazon. The company introduced Read-to-Me text to speech feature to make it possible for these folks to listen to their books instead of reading them. Of course, we all know what the Authors Guild had to say about it.

Amazon has taken a decent first step, but it will probably need to introduce voice commands on Kindle. Many GPS devices take advantage of that feature to make it easier for drivers to navigate without taking their eyes of the road. The same approach can work on Amazon. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could record your custom commands and control your device as you wish? The good news is that Amazon is planning big hardware changes with Kindle 3G, so we may see this feature on Kindle in the near future. With the Federation for the Blind suing schools that are participating in Amazon Kindle’s pilot program, Amazon may have no choice but to make Kindle more accessible to those with disabilities.