At the end of 2012, a 14-year-old high school student Chris Nusbaum stood in front of the camera, his fingertips fluently passed through the Braille, and he made a call to Shang Amazon.
Nusbaum read:
“We have a task in our class that allows us to use the information provided in the textbook. The classmates all have Kindles and textbooks. The students who can see can easily read the materials to complete the task, but I am In the absence of ancillary equipment, there is no way to see the textbook. All of these problems can be solved in a simple way: integrating text-to-speech software into the device."
For nearly 8 million visually impaired people in the United States, e-books and e-readers are both a welfare and a burden: it is a welfare, because digitalization makes everything from classical literature to romantic novels at your fingertips; it is a burden, it is Because the e-book outbreak reminds people that technology is so hard to reach. For more than a decade, there has been a long-lasting struggle between visually impaired people and US copyright law, and they have to cross the digital divide.
Books, blind people, and obstacles for blind reading
Only 1% of publications have a Braille version, and although there are many audiobooks on the online platform, there are still too few options for visually impaired people. Audible has more than 150,000 titles, but this is only 4% of Amazon's 3.4 million. If you are looking for an author who has no door, or a novelist who has been dead for a long time, you may not be so lucky. Audio books have indeed entered the market. But not many, like professional technology and academic subjects.
This is why e-book readers hold the hope of many people. There are more than one million e-books in the Kindle store. Many e-readers are pre-installed with voice synthesis (TTS), and the text on the screen is converted into live-action. Originally, TTS could read out the paid e-book aloud. This is a handsome tool that makes the digital library at your fingertips.
The same is true - until the copyright troubles come.
When the Kindle 2 was released in 2009, the TTS feature was available for all Kindle e-books. Publishers are not happy! They claim that TTS will have a negative impact on the audiobook market and constitute a violation of copyright.
Amazon has made a step backwards, giving the publication the right to not adapt to the TTS feature. Publishers have used this to make a series of books lose their TTS. The door to the digital library was once again shut down for blind and visually impaired people.
Chris tells us:
“We blind people demand an accessible environment. We don’t want to get everyone’s sympathy and charity. We just want to have the same ability to get information as everyone else. We have the same spiritual pursuit as people with vision and health, and they are educated and There is fair competition in labor, and we make this small request to developers and educational institutions: I hope to have access to information."
Two years ago, Chris’s appeal to Amazon made things a turn for the better. The TTS function was applied more widely, but the condemnation of its infringement did not subside.
For three major e-book providers—Apple, Amazon, and Barnes, TTS is limited. The built-in voice synthesis function of the iPad can be compatible with a variety of e-book formats, but most Kindle devices do not have TTS, only the Kindle Fire, but will be interfered by the publisher using DRM. It is difficult for readers of visual impairment to determine which e-book supports TTS before purchasing.
DRM, digital rights management, prevents piracy in e-books. But for people with disabilities, DRM is a barrier that prevents them from listening to good books.
Right to read
This does not mean that the shackles cannot be lifted. Visually impaired people have found a viable way to open the door to digital libraries with technology.
If a tablet does not have a TTS, you can root and install a TTS application. More often than not, people just strip DRM from the e-books they buy, so that e-books can be used as audio books with TTS. The problem is that these workarounds are all under US law.
But breaking the encryption settings for protecting digital publications, tampering with instructions or jailbreaking is not legal. It’s also technically a crime to strip DRM from e-books – but the Library of Congress has agreed to waive the guilt of visually impaired people. This is a very interesting phenomenon: it is legal for people with disabilities to strip DRM from e-books, but it is illegal for developers to develop this application.
However, exemptions are not permanent: every three years they ask the Library of Congress to refine the previously enacted provisions that the reading rights of persons with disabilities are actually legal, but this opportunity is only available once every three years, and they have already done so. More than a decade.
Claimants barely gained immunity in 2010. This year, I don't know what happened.
Reading is a basic human right, and the Library of Congress does not, and the copyright owner does not – no one has the right to deprive it. If developers don't dare to write helper programs that help the blind, consumers don't dare to repair their stuff at will, and visually impaired people like Chris may not be able to listen to the book.
Chris, a 16-year-old high school student, said: "For me, if I can use a word to describe TTS, it is liberation, this is a kind of freedom. I, as a blind person, most of the time can not be like a normal vision. People are as close to information as they are. When I learn that I can get information, I feel that I am free."
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