The Accessible Kindle Client, take two

For the record, RantWoman is an incurable optimist: even after all of RantWoman's grumbles about the Kindle, RantWoman was browsing the job ads at http://www.amazon.com/ . There are a large number of postings involving, ta-da, THE KINDLE. Ummmmm. ...

On the up side, RantWoman was chatting with Blind Power User tonight at the Friendly Neighborhood Center for Extreme Computing. Blind Power User and RantWoman seem to swim in different information streams. Blind Power user told RantWoman of several Sunday radio broadcasts devoted to computers. RantWoman tends to leave Sundays for other pursuits, but took note just in case of, for instance, total calamity of faith.

RantWoman told Blind Power User of her personal experience in the hoary mists of prehistory when the Internet was called the ARPANET and work got done on punch cards and green bar paper and 300 baud was considered a great connection speed. Then RantWoman started to feel REALLY old, but she and Blind Power User kept chatting about our screen reader experiences and "the rodent" as a very early Mac tester RantWoman knew called it.


News of the accessible PC client had not yet reached Blind Power User, and he was very excited. Blind Power User has none of RantWoman's grumbles about wanting to read in foreign languages or needing content not published in the US. Blind Power User was pleased to learn that a lot of Kindle content is very cheap. Blind Power User was going to head right home and start downloading.


Then Blind Power User and RantWoman had the very same instincts: we decided to see whether we could download the Kindle client to a USB drive. Ix-nay! We both tried it. We both got tedious messages about the download going to the C: drive without asking us. RantWoman is SO annoyed, especially since she just this week downloaded the portable version of NVDA onto her USB drive.

Here's the deal: as Blind Power User is fond of reminding RantWoman, RantWoman owns probably one of the biggest laptops on the market. RantWoman REALLY LIKES her laptop. Even for RantWoman though, enthusiasm is not endless for more weight-bearing exercise. RantWoman SO enjoys times when she can tote what she needs around on, say, a USB drive for use on one of the other computers she intersects with. RantWoman thinks there should be no physical reason she should not be able to do this with her NVDA, her Kindle client, and her Kindle content. Silly RantWoman apparently has not reckoned with the mechanisms of digital rights management!

RantWoman HAS taken some time to try out the new accessible client and the verdict is decidedly mixed. In addition to the grumbles above, RantWoman, predictably has more to say. RantWoman had to disable Zoomtext because of keyboard interference. This is a drag because some versions of Zoomtext include a screen reader. RantWoman in general could quickly become highly annoyed that the accessible Kindle Client was tested with only two screen readers, a very expensive one and and an open source one when there are several others in use. This tells RantWoman that the accessible client probably was not designed with accessible application standards in mind. Grrrr.

Perhaps RantWoman is missing some subtlety in the documentation, but RantWoman previously needed her Zoomtext to interact with the visual interface on the regular client that was supposed to enlarge the text. RantWoman will put looking for a keyboard shortcut to do this on her endless to-do list. Sigh.

Once RantWoman disabled Zoomtext the Kindle client shortcuts worked as advertised. RantWoman has tried both the male and female voices and would probably choose different options in both cases. The speech was at least comprehensible even at pretty fast speeds, and RantWoman is aware that she is supposed to be pleased. Keep trying guys!