When Amazon released the Kindle 2 electronic book reader on February 9, 2009, the company announced that the device would read e-books aloud using text-to-speech (TTS) technology.  Under pressure from the Authors Guild, Amazon has announced that it will give authors and publishers the ability to disable the text-to-speech function on any or all of their e-books available for the Kindle 2. 

This raises a wide variety of concerns regarding Access to Knowledge, including DRM, reading rights, accessibility, and discriminatory pricing. As a result, KEI has joined the Reading Rights Coalition in protesting Amazon's removal of the Kindle 2's text-to-speech feature.

The Coalition, which represents people who cannot read print, protested the threatened removal of the text-to-speech function from e-books for the Amazon Kindle 2 outside the Authors Guild headquarters in New York City at 31 East 32nd Street on April 7, 2009, from noon to 2:00 p.m.  The coalition includes organizations that represent the blind, people with dyslexia, people with learning or processing issues, seniors losing vision, people with spinal cord injuries, people recovering from strokes, and many others for whom the addition of text-to-speech on the Kindle 2 promised for the first time easy, mainstream access to over 245,000 books.

The Coalition is currently collecting signatures for a petition to reinstate the Kindle's TTS functionality. You can sign the petition here, or use the link below.

In the news:

April 19, 2009. Authors' greed denies blind the right to read

April 14, 2009. Bias against blind book lovers

April 10, 2009. Can't hear what others can see

April 9, 2009. Tech Radar UK: Charity Coalition Slams Amazon's Kindle

April 7, 2009. Promise falls short for Amazon's Kindle

April 7, 2009. Reading Rights Coalition Urges Authors to Allow Everyone Access to E-books

April 6, 2009. Le Kindle muselé, une 'discrimination flagrante' et une plainte (French)

March 31, 2009. Cory Doctorow: Authors have lost the plot in Kindle battle

February 11, 2009. EFF: Does the Authors Guild Want to Sue You for Reading Aloud to Your Kids?

Coverage of the protest:

CNN.com

LA Times

CNET

Publishers Weekly

EFF

Wired

Gizmodo

KEI Blog

Resources:

Reading Rights Coalition - Equal and not Separate Reading Rights

The Reading Rights Coalition is comprised of 31 groups, and growing:

AbilityNet
American Association of People with Disabilities
American Council of the Blind
American Foundation for the Blind
Arc of the United States
Association of Blind Citizens
AHEAD (Association on Higher Education and Disability)
Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law
Burton Blatt Institute
DAISY Consortium
Disability 411
Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund (DREDF)
IDEAL Group, Inc.
International Center for Disability Resources on the Internet (ICDRI)
International Dyslexia Association
International Dyslexia Association – New York Branch Learning Disabilities
Jewish Guild for the Blind
Knowledge Ecology International (KEI)
Learning Disabilities Association of America
Lighthouse International
Lighthouse San Fransisco
National Association of Law Students with Disabilities
National Center for Learning Disabilities
National Disability Rights Network
National Federation of the Blind
National Industries for the Blind
NISH (formerly National Institute for the Severely Handicapped)
National Spinal Cord Injury Association
Smart Kids with Learning Disabilities
United Cerebral Palsy
Xavier Society for the Blind

Sign the petition: Allow everyone access to E-books

KEI Blog on the Kindle 2, Right to Read, and Authors Guild

Claude Almansi's bookmarks on Kindle 2 and DRM