Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
I do find this type of case to be wholly without merit. Yes, it's very unfortunate to be blind, but it's not Amazon's fault that somebody is, and they are surely under no "obligation" to make the Kindle usable by blind people any more than MP3 player manufacturers are under an obligation to make their devices usable by the deaf. It's certainly not "discrimination".
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Playing the devil's advocate here, I think the issue may be more about Universities, which are public institutions receiving government funding, spending a considerable amount of money on proprietary technology which could easily be made accessible to the visually impaired but is not. That being said, I think this is very foolish. The visually impaired have a right to access to public facilities and to an education; this does not mean that every piece of equipment has to be accessible provided that equivalents are provided. A library system out in california made a similar decision; they would stop ordering overdrive books until TTS was enabled. If my library tried to pull that I would be quite perturbed. There are plenty of Audiobooks available and they are actually superior to TTS. All this does is harm the majority in the name of a flawed concept of equity.