Celebrating Kindle Access

Imagine a world where a totally blind person has access to over 1.8 million books and magazines. Imagining and hoping is exactly what Allison Hartley has done for the last several years. Until a few days before recording this podcast, much of the Amazon Kindle content was inaccessible. The limited content that was accessible was frustrating and to work with and marginally accessible at best. In this podcast, you will hear Allison and Robert’s surprise and delight when they discovered that on May 1st, Amazon quietly rolled out an update that makes the iOS Kindle app fully VoiceOver compatible. Allison and Robert discuss the very polished and highly functional UI. Allison demonstrates how she can read and navigate MacWorld magazine. They explain several ways of purchasing kindle content either from an iOS device or a computer. Fortunately, purchasing is easy and fully accessible. Robert and Allison discuss the reaction of some of the leaders in the blindness community to the release of this app. Robert and Allison express their disappointment with the tone of the NFB Press Release concerning the app. We feel that now is the time for celebrating progress rather than making demands. That said, the NFB Technology Center published a comprehensive review on the NFB Technology Blog Allison and Robert feel that giving the app only a “c” grade overall was too low, we recommend the reading of this review to learn a lot about this app. At the time of this podcast, the most complete and informative demonstration of the app has been published by David Woodbridge and is available as an Applevis Podcast. Finally, Robert and Allison are delighted by the coverage that the app becoming accessible is receiving in the mainstream press. Allison and Robert are thrilled to have been guests on The Unofficial Apple Weblog Sunday evening Talkcast. We discussed the topic of Accessibility in general and the accessibility of the Kindle app specifically. We encourage every iOS user to download this free Kindle app and join the celebration. Happy Reading you all.