iPad will be a blind-friendly e-book reader

iPad will be a blind-friendly e-book reader
[17-03-2010]

As an e-book reader, the iPad won’t have to deal with one of the headaches that has haunted Amazon’s Kindle.

As reported by Wired, when Apple began taking pre-orders for the much-anticipated device on Friday the company offered some details on how its e-books will work. Not only will the iPad be able to dictate books aloud to readers, but it will also use the VoiceOver functionality currently found on iPhones to help blind users navigate through the menus to get to the books stored on the device.

Late last year, several American universities settled lawsuits brought by advocates for the blind, who complained that pilot programs using the Kindle as a textbook platform discriminated against the vision-impaired. The Kindle 2, while featuring a read-aloud function, had no audio navigation to help blind users find and play e-books. Amazon has plans to release a more accessible version this summer — around the same time the pilot programs were set to expire anyway.

Last summer, as reported in The Wall Street Journal, Apple sensed an opportunity to exploit Amazon’s weakness and joined with the e-book subscription service CourseSmart to offer more than 7,000 books available to iPhone and iPod Touch users.

While the iPad may be more accessible to blind users out of the box, this doesn’t mean there won’t be other problems for Apple as the company enters the e-book market in earnest. The Wired article points out that when Amazon’s Kindle 2 shipped with its meager read-aloud function, the Authors Guild objected on the grounds that it violated copyright regulations intended to protect the sales of audiobooks, and demanded licensing fees. Amazon objected to the objection, but relented and gave copyright owners the option to enable or disable the read-aloud feature on specific titles.

Wired also reported on some other interesting iPad details that emerged last week: The device will let customers import books not purchased through Apple’s iBooks store, as long as they’re in the EPUB format — “the most popular open book format in the world,” Apple’s website says, and the one that the iBooks app will use.

Source: [geekwithlaptop.com]

Posted under: IPAD - IPHONE AND MEDIA