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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Harry, you are right as regards Amazon but I think -- based solely on the little that has been presented here (and I freely admit I may well be wrong) -- that the lawsuit's purpose is being misconstrued.
As I understand it, the suit is about requiring students to use the Kindle as part of the university's requirements for a class. When the program was originally started, the idea was to replace printed textbooks with Kindled ebooks and require students to use the Kindle to access the coursework.
If this is correct, then the lawsuit makes sense to me: It is asking that the requirement of using a Kindle be eliminated. To require a particular course as part of graduation requirements, and to require the use of certain texts in that class, necessarily implies that (a) the course will be available to all students (after all, how could someone graduate if they haven't taken a required-to- graduate course?) and (b) that the required course materials will be accessible and available to all enrolled students.
I suspect that the Kindle program fails on the latter and that is what the lawsuit is about
: stopping universities from requiring students to use material that they cannot access.
Again, let me emphasize that not having read the lawsuit papers I am only guessing and may be wrong by 180 degrees.