Why does a single technology have to address 100% of the student population's needs. It seems that if the Kindle serves the needs of 95% of a total student population then why keep them from having access? I am not sure I understand the logic. I am not sure we will ever find "one size" fits all for today's student population.

It's the same logic that explains why we have elevators in buildings.
Virtual/Tech-based accessibility is just as important as physical accessibility.

Have they tested their existing ones with students who are dyslexic? I don't know about the two universities in question, but where I work, we've got a lot of dyslexic students - and only 1 that I know of who requires screen reading for a visual disability. However, many of those who are dyslexic like things that read things to them.

If the Kindle is improved to make it easier for visually disabled users to use, I hope that they don't make it then very awkward for sighted users who want it to read to them, but can use the controls visually. (compare, for example, the difficulty of using JAWS if you can see, with a screen reader designed for dyslexic users)

#2 Not everyone is entitled to elevators, as my daily 5-flight sojourns to classrooms attest.

Entitlement has twisted our priorities, and made the US unable to do anything truly progressive. In this case, another minority of litigious victims of discrimination sue ASU, scaring the pants off administrators at UWM and Syracuse. This small minority has ensured that the rest of us are also "victimized". This is not fairness, but envy.

The Kindle, as imperfect as it is, is inspiring many people to actually read books once more, whilst saving lots of trees. Yes, blind people are a special needs group, but how will reducing sales of Kindles encourage development of a special reading device for them. Wouldn't it be better to encourage Amazon to develop new hardware and software, than to discourage them from developing anything other than an advanced logistics/transportation system for getting us paper books cheaply and quickly?

This is such a typically American saga, destroying progress through litigation. Victimology is destroying us. Coming down the pike will be the end of podcasting, because a minority of deaf people can't hear them. Or the end of bubble-tests, because amputees can't operate pencils. But we'll still have lawyers ready to defend "civil" rights whilst very uncivilly destroying progress that could better serve all of us.

This is one of the most ridiculous things I've read in a long time. Will these schools stop buying regular textbooks too? Where does this end?

laoshi - well said! Extremely well said! If it was the Perkins school, then I'd understand it, but it's not. Both universities, in the name of serving everyone, serve no one. And then stick out their chests oh so proudly. . . It's pathetic.

It is completely unacceptable for a university to ask students to use a e-book reader that is inaccessible for students with disabilities. These students have a right to take college courses, and it is ridiculous for universities to take steps to make this more difficult for them. I applaud the actions of these two universities in taking a stand, and I think it is a shame that they have purchased any of the devices without investigating their accessibility for people with disabilities.

For those in this forum who say that it is "ridiculous," I think it may be that you are misinformed. Clearly, universities are not going to ban regular textbooks as one previous poster suggested ad absurdum. There are methods in place for making paper textbooks accessible for blind students (braille transcription services, scanning-based book-readers, magnification systems for people with low vision, etc.). The issue here is whether it is appropriate for a university to adopt a new technology that all of the students in the room are supposed to use when blind students can't use it. Especially when there are more accessible ways to make the textbooks available. In effect, the university would be taking a big step backwards (in terms of accessibility) by doing so.

Technologically, it is a trivial programming task to have the device speak aloud its menu choices. The device can already read-aloud the text of the books (so the text-to-speech technology is already in the device). The company just needs to make this a priority, and if there is a financial incentive to do so (because they may lose customers), then perhaps this will happen. There is no reason why adding this feature would make the device more difficult for sighted people to use -- it could merely be turned on/off with the press of a button (or button-combination). This should be a no-brainer. There is minimal work involved in making the device more accessible, and it doesn't harm anyone else to do so.

I am disturbed by the low-brow and uninformed level of discussion on this issue in this venue. I would have expected better. Taking the attitude that it is too-much-trouble to make education accessible for students with disabilities is a concerning perspective to read in a higher education forum. By universities adopting a technology for classroom use that blind students in the room cannot use, then they are effectively telling students with a disabilities that they are not welcome in the classroom. Not only is this immoral, but it also might be against the law -- depending on your interpretation of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Frankly, as members of the higher education profession, we shouldn't need a law to require us to allow every student should be able to have an education. This is a matter of principle. One way in which future generations will judge us as a society is on the choices we make to make the world more accessible for people with disabilities and to raise their quality of life.

I have little patience for people without disabilities who bring up the idea that it is too much to ask to make something accessible or that they are being unduly put-upon by doing so. Somethings in the world aren't about easy/hard or convenient/inconvenient. Somethings are just the right thing to do. Frankly, I'm disappointed that there are members of the profession that do not seem to agree with this, and I hope that the statements in this forum to that effect can be explained by a lack of information and understanding on this topic.

Some of these comments are beyond belief. I don't know about Syracuse, but Madison isn't buying Kindles and making them available to *all* students. The disability services office is *piloting a program* to provide them to visually impaired students, and they've discovered (surprise) that if a student can't see to read, a student can't see to turn the device on.

By deciding not to buy more, these disability programs are not depriving sighted students from using Kindle on the Madison or Syracuse campuses. They're acknowledging that Kindle isn't currently working for unsighted students.

Using a little critical thinking before going into a self-rightous rant is a pretty good thing.

The issue of Kindle use at universities is broader than these two specific schools. For the past year, there have been articles in the press on the Kindle pilot program for using kindles instead of paper textbooks for all students in a classroom. Various universities participated in this pilot program, including: Princeton, Case Western Reserve, Reed College, Arizona State, Pace, and University of Virginia. The Chronicle of Higher Education "Wired Campus" blog has covered this issue in the past:

http://chronicle.com/blogPost/Advocates-for-the-Blind-Sue/7252/

So, there is a broader backdrop to this issue beyond the statements of these two universities, and it is incorrect to say that pilot programs for kindles are only giving them to students with disabilities. Perhaps that is what has occurred at these two schools, but that was not was my interpretation of the press coverage has led me to believe. In any case, the goal of these programs at the above universities has been to distribute them to all students in a particular classroom to use instead of paper textbooks for that semester (with an implied future ambition to deploy these devices more broadly). It is with this possibility in mind that it becomes very important to consider the accessibility of these devices before they are formally adopted.

To #8: To be careful, I re-read the article three times. Yes, the article discussed the pilot effort at Syracuse, but no mention of the size/scope of Madison's effort. It then said (by inference) that based on the trial by the Blatt Institute, the University would not buy large numbers for the campus. Nowhere did the article discuss Madison's decision process, and nowhere did it state whether both Universities were considering adopting Kindle's as a requirement for all students. If you had additional information about Madison's decision, simply sharing that to provide readers with more knowledge would have been sufficient and appropriate. Instead, you have come across as lacking critical READING skills and not a little self-righteous yourself.

Thanks, Matthewpaul, for saying more eloquently and less heatedly what I'd like to have said. The blithe dismissal of the needs of the handicapped by some commenters is truly breath-taking, and in my opinion unworthy of anyone engaged in higher or any other level of education. Doubtless these thoughtless people regard wheelchair ramps, handicap parking spaces, and closed captioning to be unnecessary frills as well. Since they don't happen to need them, to hell with those who do.

Victimology is a real problem today, no doubt, but it has nothing to do with the desire for a level playing field. Some temporarily able people seem to believe that blind people willfully chose to be blind, deaf to be deaf, and so on. There are worse things than being physically or mentally handicapped: morally handicapped, for example.

Seriously people. So the Kindle does not work for a certain population, ok. Let's find another thing for that population (maybe a specially designed reader that is built without a screen). We do the same thing with books. The idea that everyone cannot use the Kindle so we cannot use the Kindle in a school is ridiculous. If the Kindle works for 95% of students then use it and find something else that works for the other 5%.

John Adkins

@matthewpaul

"This should be a no-brainer. There is minimal work involved in making the device more accessible, and it doesn't harm anyone else to do so."

If this is such a no-brainer, why don't YOU rise to the occasion?

Hardware/software development take time, brains, and money. Suing the principal developer will not benefit blind students, seeing students, or naive educators who somehow think that a talking book will solve everyone's problem. Talk about "low-brow and uninformed level of discussion"; if the shoe fits, wear it!

While it is indeed true that time, brains, and money is required for software development, it's also necessary for the company that owns the software to be willing to make changes (or give others access to make those changes) in order for this kind of progress to be made.

Some readers with less knowledge of software design may benefit from an explanation of how closed-source software embedded in consumer electronics is designed and modified. The problem is that an outside third-party can't make changes to the software inside a hardware device produced by a company when that software is not open-source or modifiable by the end-user. If it were only that easy, then the required modifications to make the menu items be read aloud would be something that a pair of software developers could finish in the matter of a week. While there are many of us working in the field of software design for people with disabilities (myself for over 15 years), there isn't anything that a volunteer can do until the company decides to make the change.

I agree that lawsuits are typically not the best way to encourage companies to make changes to products. In the case of the two universities discussed in this blog entry, there is no lawsuit. In fact, that's what is elegant in this case. The universities have decided to take a stand and say that they will not purchase these devices until they are better designed. Thus, it is left as a matter of market forces for the company who produces the device to decide if it is worth it to them to make the change to avoid losing customers. This type of economic pressure to make products more accessible seems like an ideal way to effect change.

Further, the universities are not banning the use of the e-book readers; an isolated student who wished to buy an e-version of a textbook to read on their personal device could certainly do so. Instead, the universities are delaying initiatives to deploy large numbers of e-book readers to students across the campus. I don't think anyone would argue that e-book readers are a great option for most textbooks, and it seems like the way of the future. The issue is that it would be better for universities to wait until the companies that build these devices make a few changes to make them more accessible before we start buying lots of them (and thus making a de facto standard that is difficult to change).

Stepping back a second, how about this: the schools shouldn't order large numbers because if their suggestion is taken by the makers of Kindle sometime soon and a new model comes out that is better equipped for visually impaired students, they can order THOSE instead of staring at boxes of Kindles that can't serve everybody. The curse of buying something now is that you miss out on the better (and here, more accessible) features that come out on the next model.

Matthewpaul said: "I don't think anyone would argue that e-book readers are a great option for most textbooks, and it seems like the way of the future. The issue is that it would be better for universities to wait until the companies that build these devices make a few changes to make them more accessible before we start buying lots of them (and thus making a de facto standard that is difficult to change)."

I can see your point; however, my arguement would be that anything bought now is likely to have to be replaced in, say, 5 years time. Chances are it's going to take 2-3 years for a model that suits the needs of those who require screen reading for navigation as well as reading to be fully developed & tested. Even then, they mayn't be suitable for a severely physically disabled student who has great difficulty with fine motor movements - they'll probably still need an assistant to help.
However, in those 5 years or so, a great number of students who have dyslexia (or just prefer audio to reading from preference & no other reason) will have access to them (just as most of the older material in the University library will have to continue to be encoded for visually impaired users ... it won't all automatically be e-bookable.

In the interim, the hardware will be more accessible; the software will be better (e.g. greater range of colours for those who just need adjustments); and so they'll want the newer models anyway.