Reply #66: There is amazing potential here

[suffragette]

and some issues that will need to be addressed.

As you note, these have great potential for storing and using numerous copies of textbooks on one easy device. And both the hardware and software have great capability (and the potential for even better) for adaptive usage. Some of the e-readers will even support multimedia in the text such as interactive quizzes embedded in the appropriate section.

Implemented correctly, these can show the best of universal design and how everyone can benefit from additional accessibility. Zooming is a great example of that, as is text-to speech (TTS) and with the iPad, the potential availability of many helpful apps, such as Dragon Dictation and Search for speech recognition, etc. There's also potential for other helpful specialized assistive tech such as Proloquo2Go, an Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) application. Having all this available on one easy to use, portable device would be a huge step in the right direction, especially IF they will function together.


As others have noted, Kindle grabbing back "1984" illustrated some of the issues with DRM. And at this point, Amazon also went the wrong direction in that by restricting usage of its already available TTS to the publisher's whim, rather than making it always available. Amazon also need to address the accessibility of the device itself for . For more on that,
http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/doj_settles_kindle_e-book_reader_complaints_with_4_colleges
That's all readily achievable and from what I've read, eInk sounds like a great technology.

The format situation right now makes the Betamax/VHS look mild. There are numerous ereader formats out there and many of them only work with their particular brand of DRM. And some restrict functionality, particularly TTS, because of the implementation of the DRM. Copyrighted books are tied to the format, software and, in some cases, hardware. And that could cause issues, especially as some formats die out. Will people then lose access to the books they purchased? I think it's likely in some cases and that's not good.

Apple's adoption of EPUB sounds interesting since it's open source and there are already tons of public domain texts on it.
http://www.epubbooks.com/ is just one site that has those. http://www.teleread.org/free-ebooks/ does too and there you start to see that these are in numerous formats.
(My favorite site for searching for etext and audio is still archive.org, since it provides results from the many, many different sources and tells you what format(s) are available. Even pops up an onscreen audio player for results from Librivox, an audio Gutenberg-like project.)

And it looks like Google is conducting its massive scanning of books in EPUB, so hopefully those should be available for use on the iPad. Apple started off well in the accessibility zone since the iPad will have Voiceover (its built-in screenreader), zoom and a few other features and more should be available through apps.
Good 1st look at those features here: http://atmac.org/accessibility-and-the-ipad-first-impressions/
The question will be whether they allow complete use of Voiceover or not with DRM books.

And what will shake out with the competing formats?
Just the other day, I saw some info on the Blio eReader, which Kurzweil (the guy who created the gold standard for text-to-speech) is readying for launch. He's taking the free software reader approach and it sounds innovative and he's a guy who really gets accessibility and universal design. But this again brings up format, being yet another format and program. http://blioreader.com/