Audible adds captions--publishers scream

[Fiat_Lux]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

And the blind could buy a Daisy version of a pbook.

How many DAISY ebooks have you come across, that adhere to either DAISY1, or DAISY2, or DAISY3 specifications?

99.999999% of the time, DAISY is used as nothing more than a container format for either audio files, or HTML files. Usually very poor quality renderings, at that.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by Fiat_Lux

How many DAISY ebooks have you come across, that adhere to either DAISY1, or DAISY2, or DAISY3 specifications?

99.999999% of the time, DAISY is used as nothing more than a container format for either audio files, or HTML files. Usually very poor quality renderings, at that.

Virtually none.
Which was the point.

Separate but equal is always unequal which is why the accessibility laws are so draconian.

[fjtorres]

Audible files their response (via Ars Technica):

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...-are-fair-use/

Sure enough, they're relying on the Betamax line of precedents:

"Audible Captions is not a book of any kind, much less a replacement for paper books, e-books, or cross-forma products," Audible argues in its latest filing.

Audible argues that the technology has substantial public benefits. It can help people with learning disabilities or limited hearing to better understand audiobooks. It can aid people learning a new language. And it can help a growing number of teens who have grown accustomed to watching online videos with captions on—and would benefit from listening to audiobooks the same way.

Audible argues its technology is fair use

Copyright's fair-use doctrine has enabled a number of key media technologies over the last 40 years. Amazon's legal filing cites the famous 1984 Supreme Court ruling holding that recording copyrighted TV shows with a video cassette recorder was legal. The company points to a 2015 appeals court ruling upholding Google's ambitious project to scan millions of copyrighted books for use in its search engine. Audible also mentions a series of cases holding that it was fair use to display thumbnails of copyrighted images in search results.

In each of those cases, the courts sided with the defendants even though they had copied works without the permission of their copyright holders. Fair use considers several factors, including whether the use is "transformative" and whether it will undermine the market for the original work.

Audible says its software sends the audio file to Amazon's servers for transcription, then stores the full transcript on the user's device. However, Audible takes precautions to make sure the user can only view a few words of the transcript at a time—and only synchronized to the audiobook. These limitations bolster Audible's fair-use case because the transcript is a poor substitute for an e-book if it can only be viewed at the speed the audio file plays.

Going from audio to text is definitely transformative so the question (legally) boils down to whether captions on an audio file will replace enough ebook sales to be considered as undermining. Given audiobooks are more expensive than ebooks that is going to be a tough row to hoe for publishers. Courts have not been terribly receptive to anti-fair use arguments in even more complex cases, like the MP3 case.

They'd better have good lawyers.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Virtually none.
Which was the point.

Separate but equal is always unequal which is why the accessibility laws are so draconian.

Hmmm... reminds of that idiot who was upset with the Crane library at UBC since most of their Braille books did not have standard text printed on the pages. That knife cuts both ways.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Fiat_Lux

There are gun ranges who have a sub-specialty of training blind people in gun safety, and target shooting. Blind, as in no vision at all.

I'm tempted to ask how someone with no vision manages to aim at a target without substantial and likely not too portable technological assistance. Or does someone else aim the weapon and the blind person simply pulls the trigger?

But then, too many people with normal vision have trouble aiming. Like the gentleman in northern BC who shot in the direction of children playing in their yard. His lawyer tried to argue that their parents knowing it was hunting season should not have allowed the children to play outside.

On a more serious note, you really want to be in the woods when someone who is legally blind is hunting? It's going to be a trifle hard to hunt while wearing that loud fluorescent outfit and carrying a boombox. Unless of course that is what attracts your choosen prey.

[fjtorres]

M

Originally Posted by DNSB

Hmmm... reminds of that idiot who was upset with the Crane library at UBC since most of their Braille books did not have standard text printed on the pages. That knife cuts both ways.

There's no shortage of fools out there.
Especially among politicians. The rest of us have to live with the result of their deeds, like it or not.

Fairness or common sense doesn't factor into it.
If it says everything, it means everything.
ADA is all-encompassing: no exceptions. Once it's invoked it's unstoppable which is probably why Audible is relying on fair use.
They would rather have the option of doing captions or not than be forced to do so (along with *every* audiobook vendor). As an option it's a competitive advantage but if everybody has to do it it isn't.

[JSWolf]

If you need to read the words, buy the eBook and read along with the audiobook.

[tomsem]

I wish they would ship the feature already. I’ve been waiting for Amazon to implement Word Runner in the iOS Kindle app, so this would sort of be that: turn off the audio, and crank up the speed to 3.5x!

I probably would not use it much but I want to try it out.

[fjtorres]

Accessibility is mandatory, even on the internet.(?)
It's being litigated right now, heading to the SCOTUS:

https://www.cnet.com/news/why-the-fa...izza-lawsuit/#

Many websites still aren't designed and coded so that people with disabilities, ranging from visual to auditory to cognitive, can use them. Americans with disabilities are nearly three times as likely to never go online. They're also around 20% less likely to have home broadband and own a computer, smartphone or tablet, according to Pew Research Center.

The issue is coming to a head thanks to a potential Supreme Court case involving a blind customer and an unlikely defendant: Domino's Pizza.

Guillermo Robles sued the restaurant in 2016 after he wasn't able to order a custom pizza from its website and app, even while using screen-reading technology. The appeals court in the Ninth Circuit sided with Robles, ruling the ADA does in fact apply to websites and apps of businesses with physical locations. Now, the company is asking the Supreme Court to review the case. It'll decide whether to do so in the fall.

"The internet, without reservation, is the world's largest infrastructure," said former Rep. Tony Coelho of California, who authored the ADA. "That, in effect, means that [Domino's is] covered by the ADA. The courts have ruled that."

One reason many businesses lag behind when it comes to accessibility is a lack of enforcement, Coelho said. In 2010, the Justice Department said it was going to put out web accessibility regulations, but it ultimately ditched that plan in 2017. Courts have ruled the ADA applies online, but that hasn't been enough to convince businesses across the board to implement accessibility initiatives.

People are getting fed up. Last year, the number of website accessibility lawsuits nearly tripled compared with 2017, according to an accessibility blog by law firm Seyfarth Shaw. One of the biggest challenges to making sites accessible is that unlike physical spaces, the digital world is constantly changing. That can make keeping up with regulations difficult, said Minh Vu, an attorney at Seyfarth Shaw.

More at the source, which is part of a series:

https://www.cnet.com/tech-enabled/

The heart of this dispute is the "reasonable accomodation" clause. In this case, whether requiring the disabled to use the phone instead of the website (buy a different product, effectively) is a reasonable answer to ADA requirements. In this particular case, domino's has web only deals they will *not* honor by phone. This is not uncommon.

The appeal has a variety of possible outcomes:
- SCOTUS could refuse the case and let the Appeals court ruling stand
- SCOTUS could overturn the ruling totally (possible, since the 9th Circuit is the most overturned court) and say ADA doesn't appeal online since the web didn't exist when tbe law was passed.
- SCOTUS could overturn the law saying ADA doesn't apply online but that not honoring online deals by phone is discriminatory and that all channels must honor the same deals.(Which would affect everybody with multiple storefronts, online, phone, fax, and B&M.)

The last is least likely, the first most likely.
We'll see soon enough.
Either way, lots of lawsuits are incoming...

[Fiat_Lux]

Originally Posted by DNSB

I'm tempted to ask how someone with no vision manages to aim at a target without substantial and likely not too portable technological assistance. Or does someone else aim the weapon and the blind person simply pulls the trigger?

The only Range Safety Officer I've talked to, claimed that there were fewer accidents with blind people, than with sighted people. Apparently, blind people aren't as prone to doing stupid things, such as cleaning their weapon, without first ensuring that it is unloaded.

Generally, blind people don't shoot long guns. Regardless, the target has a beeper, that the shooter can focus on.

#####

I don't know if it was the specific range, or the usual practice, but before anybody could should at that range, they had to pass a safety course. Included in that course were:
* Field stripping and cleaning your weapon;
* Close range disarming of attackers with guns;
* How not to be disarmed;
* Basic First Aid;
* Bullet extraction and cleaning of gunshot wounds;

All of that, before you were allowed to fire anything.