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Originally Posted by HarryT
I'm afraid I really can't agree with you. I honestly don't believe that "helping the disabled" was even the tiniest consideration behind the creation of eBooks.
But touch screens don't rule out blind users. I'm sure you've seen, for example, what a superb interface the iPad offers for the blind user "out of the box". It's won all sorts of praise from blind organisations for that.
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Maybe the current ones were not created for the disabled, but the creation of them was:
From
here:
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"ebooks were created by the blind, then made inaccessible by the sighted."
Online text formats like DAISY and EPUB were pioneered in part by the accessibility movement as an alternative to expensive and cumbersome Braille texts. As ebooks have gained popularity, however, digital text became inexorably less accessible as for-profit readers like the Kindle and Sony Reader muscled onto the scene. A patina of digital rights management (DRM) has been added in order to protect the intellectual property of vendors, contrary to the open and accessible orientation libraries have long held toward literacy and learning.
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ETA: Yes, I have heard about the updates to the Apple products. The problem with that set up is that the Apple products have a glass interface. If any accidents occur only a sighted person can see/avoid cracks, etc. There is also the assorted issues with lugging around an iPad that the sighted have, too. It's heavy, clunky and much more breakable than most of the dedicated devices.
My cousin does have an iPhone which she loves. Previous OS did not allow for the required changes to the system to allow for speech so she couldn't have one in the past.