Kindle DX Deployment
Group Sues to Stop Kindle DX Deployment at ASU
Amazon Kindle News) The National Federation of the Blind (NFB) and the American Council of the Blind (ACB) has filed a lawsuit against Arizona State University to stop the University from purchasing the Amazon Kindle DX to replace textbooks in the classroom. Both the NFB and ACB say that the Amazon Kindle DX cannot be used by blind students. The main contentions in the lawsuit is that while the Kindle DX has a text-to-speech feature, the menus to select a book or purchase a book are not blind-friendly, making it impossible to select textbooks for download.
Six educational institutions, including ASU, are deploying the Kindle DX as part of a pilot project to assess the role of electronic textbooks in the classroom. The NFB and ACB have also filed complaints with the Office for Civil Rights of the U.S. Department of Education and the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, asking for investigations of these five institutions, which are: Case Western Reserve University, the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia, Pace University, Princeton University, and Reed College. The lawsuit and complaints allege violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the Rehabilitation Act of 1973.
“Given the highly-advanced technology involved, there is no good reason that Amazon’s Kindle DX device should be inaccessible to blind students,” says Dr. Marc Maurer, President of the National Federation of the Blind. “Amazon could have used the same text-to-speech technology that reads e-books on the device aloud to make its menus accessible to the blind, but it chose not to do so. Worse yet, six American higher education institutions that are subject to federal laws requiring that they not discriminate against students with disabilities plan to deploy this device, even though they know that it cannot be used by blind students. The National Federation of the Blind will not tolerate this unconscionable discrimination against and callous indifference to the right of blind students to receive an equal education. We hope that this situation can be rectified in a manner that allows this exciting new reading technology to be made available to blind and sighted students alike.”
By Joe Tracy
Tags: amazon kindle dx, amazon kindledx, kindle dx, kindledx
ไม่มีหมวดหมู่ | new_sukae1@sanook.com | 04 กรกฎาคม 2009 |
