This can't possibly be true, can it?

[neilmarr]

Thanks for the chuckle, Webba. The way the language is abused these days, if you didn't laugh, you'd have to weep. Thanks for pointing out yet another ambiguity deserving of ridicule. I'm still waiting for some site to stipulate 'no reading allowed'. Mind you, with geographical restrictions imposed on titles and stores refusing the downloading of books by perceived 'foreign' users of their hardware, this might at least be accurate. Best wishes -- et bon courage. Neil

[obs20]

Apparently the copyright owners are fighting the treaty which enables disabled people access to media.
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/12/blind_block

[Moejoe]

Originally Posted by obs20

Apparently the copyright owners are fighting the treaty which enables disabled people access to media.
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/12/blind_block

And they wonder why more and more people ignore copyright outright.

[obs20]

Originally Posted by Moejoe

And they wonder why more and more people ignore copyright outright.

It seems to me the only ones threatened by Text to Speech are the voice over artists without any talent(many of them are dreadful).

[Ea]

Originally Posted by obs20

Apparently the copyright owners are fighting the treaty which enables disabled people access to media.
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/12/blind_block

Wow! Crazy.

Quotes from the article:
Quote: "... argues that the plan being proposed by Brazil, Ecuador and Paraguay, “raises a number of serious concerns,” (.pdf) chief among them the specter that the treaty would spawn a rash of internet book piracy."
Booo!


Quote: "The treaty also creates a bad precedent by loosening copyright restrictions, instead of tightening them as every previous copyright treaty has done, said Brad Huther, a chamber director. Huther concluded in a Dec. 2 letter to the U.S. Copyright office that the international community “should not engage in pursuing a copyright-exemption based paradigm.”"
This is just plain scary

And, in other news, MPA and RIIA still wear blinders:
Quote "Echoing that concern, the Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry of America told the Copyright Office last month that such a treaty would “begin to dismantle the existing global treaty structure of copyright law, through the adoption of an international instrument at odds with existing, longstanding and well-settled norms.”"
*Sigh*

[PG4003]

This is right up there with the warning when you buy a hair dryer: Do not use in the bath tub.

[Bilbo1967]

Originally Posted by PG4003

This is right up there with the warning when you buy a hair dryer: Do not use in the bath tub.

Or the one you see on a packet of peanuts when bought in the UK: "Caution, may contain nuts"

[GeoffC]

Originally Posted by Bilbo1967

Or the one you see on a packet of peanuts when bought in the UK: "Caution, may contain nuts"

mmmm as someone pointed out to me a long while ago, a peanut is a bean ... but the point is taken as you meant it ....

[Worldwalker]

Welcome to the wonderful world of DRM "protection" and "security". Oh, right? No, not yours.

[neilmarr]

DRM = Dont Read Me. Neil

[neilmarr]

PS: If you're interested and have a minute to spare, here's what I wrote about DRM in the BeWrite Books blog a month or so back: http://bewritebooks.blogspot.com/201...t-read-me.html

[wodin]

This thread prompted me to experiment with the Windows Narrator text to speech feature. It didn't work in MobiReader, but that might have just been my ignorance of how to use it.

At any rate, I didn't have any trouble getting it turned on, but I had a devil of a time getting it turned back off. The damned thing just kept reading everything on the screen except what I wanted it to read. I unchecked all the check boxes, rebooted multiple times, and it just kept up its inane babbling.

ARRGHHH!

I finally hit on the right combination, and got it to stop, after rebooting yet another time. Whew! I'm glad that's over.

I'm sure the right combination of third party text to speech software and ereader software will do the trick, but I'm not about to invest any more time in it.

[HarryT]

The iPad has a pretty good "screen reader" built in. I've seen elsewhere that it's been favourably commented on by blind users.

[kjk]

Originally Posted by HarryT

The iPad has a pretty good "screen reader" built in. I've seen elsewhere that it's been favourably commented on by blind users.

And it works with books bought in iBooks. The book I tested had text to speech disabled by request of publisher in the Kindle store-but no restriction noted in iBooks. But Apple is using their built in Accessibility
features to activate Text to Voice-I wonder if publishers are more leery about complaining about the feature in that context.

[HarryT]

I understand that one of the issues that blind users have with the Kindle is that the TTS only works on the text of the books, so they need a sighted person to select the book and play it. With the iPad, all the menus are read out too, so a blind user can use it entirely independently.