Reid My Mind
Visually Impaired

This week Amazon announced that they are developing accessible menu navigation for the popular Kindle I-Book Reader. The talking menus will allow people who are blind and visually impaired to independently use the reader. As you may recall, Amazon’s Kindle contains a “Read to Me” feature that uses text to speech (TTS) to read books [...]

Continue reading “A Brother Just Wants to Read” »

Thanks  to Ron Graham from the AccessAbility Blog for giving RMM a shoutout!   He pointed us to a blog post by Marcus over at Engel’s Ensights titled Pardon My Geekiness.   Ok, first, a lesson to all, never ever apologize for your geekiness! I don’t care what kind of Geek you are, it’s all [...]

Continue reading “IS the iPhone A Threat to Access Technology Vendors” »

I received the below email from the Author’s Guild in response to the Reading Rights Coalition protest held yesterday in NYC. Based on their statement it  still appears that the definition of audio rights will have to first be agreed upon. As someone who has been reading both books using TTS and audio narration, I [...]

Continue reading “Author’s Guild Responds to Protests” »

This was one of the slogans chanted during Tuesday’s protest  organized by the Reading Rights Coalition. The demonstration, held  outside of the NYC office of The Author’s Guild, seemed to be well attended both in person and virtually. Thanks to Mika Pyykhala and John Oliveira of the Association of Blind Citizens for streaming the event. [...]

Continue reading “No More Greed, We Want To Read!” »

I just signed the petition started by the  Reading Rights Coalition.   This organization began after Amazon released their latest version of their E-Book reader, the Kindle 2.0. The product which has built in Text to Speech has been attacked by the Author’s Guild. The Guild argues that this feature which uses synthetic speech to [...]

Continue reading “Allow Everyone Access to E-books” »

For the past few months I have been taking courses from The Hadley School for the Blind. If you’re not familiar with Hadley, it’s a free distance learning school for people who are visually impaired and blind. Their mission: To promote independent living through lifelong, distance education programs for people who are blind or visually [...]

Continue reading “Learning to Read, Again. Thanks Hadley!” »

Amazon announced that they will now modify the Kindle to allow the holder of the copyright to turn on/off the Text To Speech (TTS) functionality.   I thought I would put this in plain English, well sort of…   Amazon got Punked!   Now I don’t have any inside information so this is entirely speculative. [...]

Continue reading “Amazon Got punked” »

When I was first introduced to screen readers a little less than five years ago, I had the impression that Freedom Scientifics’ JAWS was the only game in town. It wasn’t until I began feeling comfortable using the technology and made my way back on the web, that I realized there were other solutions available. [...]

Continue reading “Serotek – Going for the Lead” »

I was talking to a friend about the idea of the "grass being greener," you know envying someone else’s position/possession, only to come to the realization that what you have is good. Envy – one of the deadly sins. I’ve gotten caught up in it when not conscious of what I was actually doing. It’s [...]

Continue reading “Where the Grass is Greener” »

This week the Pennsylvania Council of the Blind will host it’s state convention in Johnstown, PA.   MCCB, a chapter of PCB, will be hosting a workshop during the convention. The subject, “Building Relationships with the Media.” The workshop will begin  at 4 PM on Friday 10/31.   As one of three presenters, we tried [...]

Continue reading “Media Workshop During the PCB Convention – Listen Online” »