Although not all authors and publishers are keen to allow things that would make e-books more available, like
electronic text-to-speech, overall e-books have been a blessing to visually impaired blind and partially sighted people, according to a
new report by the UK-based Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB). Over the past four years, the charity looked at what they consider the 1,000 most popular books and determined the proportion of those that were available as an accessible e-book.
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In 2012, 84 per cent of the top 1,000 titles were available in braille, audio and large print, formats using eBooks.
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In comparison, in 2011 it was 73%; in 2011 it was 45%; and in 2009 it was none, according to the study.
Other key findings:
- By genre, 99% of the Adult fiction, and 77% of the Adult non-fiction titles included were available as fully accessible e-books in 2012. These figures compare to 93% of Adult fiction and 62% of Adult non-fiction in 2011.
- 43% of Children's titles were available as accessible e-books in 2012, compared to 30 per cent in 2011.
- 49% of the top 1,000 titles of 2012 were available as audio books, compared to 42% in 2011.
- 25% of the most popular 450 Adult non-fiction titles were available as unabridged downloadable audio books, compared to 43% of children's titles, and 75% fiction titles in 2012.
- 81% of the most popular General and literary fiction titles were available as unabridged human speech audio books, compared to 40% of Saga and romance titles in 2012.
Related:
How important is text-to-speech capability to you?,
Amazon, Kobo and Sony request e-readers be exempt from accessibility laws
[via
booktrade.info]