Disability groups plan protest over Kindle's text-to-speech

The battle over the Kindle 2's text-speech feature, which reads electronic books aloud, is heating up. A coalition of disability groups, led by the National Federation of the Blind, is planning a protest march outside the Authors Guild headquarters in New York Tuesday. The Guild had earlier criticized the text-to-speech feature, arguing it could undermine the market for audiobooks without compensating authors and publishers -- prompting a partial backdown from Amazon. Now the disability groups are demanding the full activation of text-to-speech, which they say gives the visually impaired equal access to electronic books.

The disability groups, who now number more than two dozen, are calling themselves the Reading Rights Coalition. In addition to organizing the march, they're circulating an online petition protesting the threatened removal of text-to-speech from Kindle titles. Last month some of the groups sent letters to the major publishing houses last month demanding that text-to-speech be fully restored to Kindle titles. Following the criticism from the Authors Guild and others, Amazon said it would allow authors and publishers to decide themselves whether to activate text-to-speech on individual titles.

The Reading Rights Coalition previews a protest slogan on its website ("No Need for Greed, We Want to Read!") and gives its mission statement:

We want to buy books. We have fought very hard for many years to have equal access to technology and information. For the first time, now that the Amazon Kindle 2 offers text-to-speech, which will read a book aloud, we can purchase and enjoy books like everybody else. Sadly, the Authors Guild does not support equal access for us. The Guild has told us that to read their books with text-to-speech we must either submit to a burdensome special registration system and prove our disabilities -- or pay extra.  The Guild’s position is contrary to the principle of equal opportunity for all and discriminates against millions of people with print disabilities.

Authors Guild Executive Director Paul Aiken couldn't immediately be reached for comment.

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