Posted on 01/14/2010 9:11:32 AM PST by rellimpank
Arizona State University has made a deal with the Justice Department to stop using popular electronic readers like the Kindle until they are made functional for the blind.
ASU is one of three universities participating in a pilot program that gave Kindles to students to see how they would work -- as opposed to actual books -- in the classroom.
The program started in May of 2009 and by June two different groups representing the blind got all butt-hurt and filed a lawsuit claiming that by using the devices, the universities were violating the Americans With Disabilities Act because they weren't easy for the blind to use.
Funny thing is that if the universities just kept the program a little hush-hush, the blind probably never would have known they were doing it. It's not like they can see students using Kindles.
(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.phoenixnewtimes.com ...
It's the very basis of liberalism - - equal misery.
If liberals must be humorless, bitter malcontents then so should everyone.
By the way, this kind of thing presents a window into the irrational liberal hatred for Sarah Palin. They hate Sarah Palin because she is a happy and sunny optimist, and she smiles a lot. It is nothing more than that. No joke.
Also, I think they hate her for the fact that she chose to keep a pregnancy that resulted in a ‘damaged’ child. In that respect they are as bad as Margaret Sanger.
There is no way to make a KIndle work for blind people! If they offer books on tape that is the option for blind people. Without a complete remodel to add sound which would probably make the KIndle too big they are unusable to blind people. Why is it that in every crowd there are one or two people who have to ruin things for everyone else?
The Kindle has that function, if the copyright owners agree to it.
Read-to-Me: With the experimental Text-to-Speech feature, Kindle can read newspapers, magazines, blogs, and books out loud to you, unless the book's rights holder made the feature unavailable ----snip ----
All computers should be banned for the same reason.
I once heard the answer to that question about braille in drive throughs. The answer is that those keypads are mass produced for many things, not just drive through ATMs, and the companies that produce them find it cheaper to use keypads with braille on drive through ATMs than order a different set.
Why?
Maybe it's time to get rid of cars, since the blind can't drive them. Or radios, since the deaf can't hear them.
Typical liberal mentality is actually hurting those he is trying to help:
Technological progress is the main way to increase the productivity of labor which increases accumulation of capital which increases total productivity which increases supply which lowers prices which raises the standard of living of everyone including those with disabilities.
The Kindle already has the function to read to you. It depends on the book and the copyright owner.
Under ADA, educational institutions are required to make “reasonable accomodations” for blind and visually impaired students. Now part of that depends of the level of impairment. For the visually impaired, they provide reprinted textbooks with much larger print. There are software programs that make everything on a monitor much, much bigger, as well, and that is installed on whatever computer the student will be accessing. For the blind, they either retype in Braille or use a reader who puts the textbooks on audio. Some things are beyond the scope of “reasonable” and cannot be accomodated.
I had a student who was legally blind, but still had some (very limited) vision. I made copies of all the course materials with much larger fonts. Disability Services hired a reader to make audio recordings of the text we were using, and we installed the “zoom” software program on the computer she used for the labs. She did very well.
Well, that was an action. Liberal hatred for Sarah Palin has little to do with her actions.
Liberals hate Palin for her sunny, optimistic personality. They are irrational.
This is the most important thing to remember, always, about liberal scumbags: They are miserable human beings and they cannot stand to see anyone else happy because that's not fair. Seeing someone else happy drives the liberal scumbags crazy. The sunny, "you betcha!", Sarah Palin is like a faceful of burning acid to those animals.
Exactly why I got a Kindle and love it. Kindles and similar devices are likely to be boons for publishers because they vastly reduce book storage space needs and eliminate most of the printing and distribution costs publishers have to pass on to readers.
That’s odd. It sounds like the Kindle would work better for the blind students than regular textbooks.
Most of the seeming incongruities which have become a staple of stand-up comedy have a reasonable explanation.
Yep.
The Kindle has sound - but a blind person could not order the books because it is only sound - no ability for voice in. However, there is an app available to those who have a Kindle to download to the Kindle PDF files (not sure if the software is smart enough yet to read a PDF file) You can also download music files - but the storage space on a Kindle is relatively small and is not currently expandable - but you can hook it up to your PC. Speaking of PC - there is also an APP available on your PC to be able to Read any books you have purchased from there - haven’t tried to see if Winders can “read” the books to me though.
I think someone said braille on drive-up ATMs was there for blind folks who might visit one in a taxi.
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