Brand Identity: Accessible Kindle Client!

RantWoman's fast first-pass verdict: Looks promising, not perfect but promising! It's also about darn time, at least in the US!

RantWoman received the following wondrous, exciting, celebration-evoking tidings this morning in her inbox. RantWoman has even downloaded the new Kindle client and verified that it works enough to test further later!

-----Original Message-----

Amazon.com is releasing a new version of Kindle for PC that adds accessibility features designed for blind and low-vision customers.

Kindle for PC with Accessibility Plugin is a free, downloadable application for your Windows PC. It provides the following accessibility features: text-to-speech reading with adjustable voice settings, voice-guided menu navigation, large font sizes, high contrast reading mode, keyboard navigation, and accessible shortcuts.

With this software, for the first time ever, the entire collection of English language books in the Kindle Store can be read aloud. With over 750,000 English language titles, Amazon offers the largest selection of accessible ebooks. In order to use the text-to-speech feature, an external screen reader program must be installed and running on the Windows PC.

The free download is available at: http://www.amazon.com/kindle/accessibility

We welcome your feedback at: kindle-PC-accessibility-feedback@amazon.com

Sincerely,
The Kindle Team

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(c) 2011 Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

Amazon, the Amazon a logo, the AmazonKindle logo, Kindle, and Whispersync are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates.

Amazon.com, 410 Terry Avenue, North, Seattle, WA 98109.
Reference: 18358260





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RantWoman concurs with:


This is an extremely important first step toward full accessibility to many books. While I'd like to see Amazon provide ubiquitous access by making their mobile devices and mobile software (along with the Mac software) accessible, it gets blind or visually impaired people the beginning of the dream of having the same access to electronic books as their sighted peers.

RantWoman notes however that she knows some authors who do not to deal with Amazon's miniscule compensations for their work and therefore do not distribute their materials through Amazon. RantWoman favors a vigorous multi-channel market for books and digital materials and will hold forth in more specifics in other posts.