I'm going to go back to the original point and weigh in as agreeing with sirbruce and rrburton.
I don't see the validity of
forcing material to be available in a format for the blind when it is not similarly forced to be available for groups of other people. The language analogy was a good one and I think it was dismissed too quickly.
The main dismissal of the comparison seems to have been this:
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Daithi
The blind and non-English speakers are most definately *NOT* at the same level of disadvantage. First, as you yourself pointed out, a non-English speaker can learn the English language. A blind person cannot learn to see.
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They may not be at the same conceptual level of disadvantage, but they are at the same functional level of disadvantage. Neither can read the book because neither can understand it. True, if you can actually read you can teach yourself English. But that's hardly a practical solution. Why not just have somebody else read it to you? That would apply equally to both a non-English reader and somebody who's blind and would be the more obvious answer.
The idea of market forces is that you have an audience and goods produced to meet that audience and its need. Rarely is anything ever done just because it's the right thing to do; it's done because there's money to be made by doing it in that way. Nobody is preventing publishers from publishing books in a form that the blind can read, just like they aren't preventing them from publishing in one language or another. They simply choose not to do so. Moreover, it's not the case that things are
never published in a format that the blind can't read - braille books do exist, and more are published each day. It's just that they're a very small subset of the print books that are published.
If we force every book publisher to publish in braille in addition to text, then we should similarly be forcing every studio to create DVDs that come with descriptive audio. It may be a good thing, but I don't think it should be a necessary and enforced thing.
Plus, once we insist on something like this being done for the blind - the slippery slope opens up for insisting on things for a long list of other people with different disabilities. (Even if we ignore, for the moment, all of the people who only speak Lithuanian and can't read the latest thriller in either English or braille.) What about those with severe dyslexia or other learning disabilities who simply can't read / understand properly no matter how much time they spend on normal language? Let's say that words could be reversed or rearranged in some way that they could then understand in their own way. Should we be forced to provide those translations? How about people who are missing limbs and are unable to push buttons to turn pages? Should there be a requirement that all books, electronic or otherwise, come with some kind of interface that will allow pages to be turned via eye movement?
I can understand the sentiment behind wanting to make books accessible to everyone, but I think that there is some kind of logical flaw in enforcing it in this situation. It seems to me that one of the hurdles for sight-impaired media simply has to do with the cost of production and the cost / benefit to publishers. Surely, we'd be better off with government offering financial incentives and tax breaks for such media - thereby allowing the market place to function in an organic fashion but still promote better selection to the disadvantaged.