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I believe they were griping about no text-to-speech function on the DX. That's what audio books are for, which the Library of Congress provides for eligible blind people who ask for them.
But what are the circumstances behind the Universities' implementation of this program? Are they requiring of students or is it voluntary? If required, the university is under obligation to make reasonable accommodations for those students who need it. The term blind, as defined by law, is misleading & covers a wide range of visual impairments from total blindness to low vision with a visual acuity of 20/200 or greater. I personally fall somewhere in the middle & being an avid reader & ereader owner (ever-faithful to my Sony), I can say that ebook readers & reasonable accommodation should be natural allies. The ability to increase text size to various proportions has been a life-saver for many of us. & I think the Kindle actually has text sizes greater than those provided by the Sony. So, in that regard, they have no right to bitch any more than they can at regular dead tree publishers, who now provide large print & audio books.
I think the real reason the ACB & other groups are pissed is because they are losing money they would normally obtain from visually impaired people who buy their $5,000 machines that blow letters up to Poster size & take up a small room, as well as other very expensive adaptive equipment geared towards making reading accessible to the blind. What buy a big, clunky machine for grand when I can but a hand-held device for a couple hundred? Blind people are not rich & will obviously choose the latter.
Anyway, I am an adamant supporter of the ADA & groups that fight for it but I think it's sometimes taken to extremes & in this case it's downright ridiculous. We have many other resources at our disposal if people would just use them.
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