After experimenting with Amazon’s electronic reading device — the Kindle DX — in the classroom, the University of Wisconsin has decided it will not adopt the current version of the device for general use due to its inaccessibility to the blind.
While the Kindle DX provides text-to-speech technology in the reading of texts, the operation of the menu lacks this feature, making the device difficult to use by the blind.
Ken Frazier, UW director of libraries, who also initiated the UW pilot Kindle program, openly criticized the device for this reason in a statement put out by the National Federation for the Blind.
“My intent in participating in the NFB release was to urge Amazon to make the device accessible,” Frazier said.
Frazier and Aaron Brower, vice chancellor of education, integrated the use of 20 Kindle DX’s in Professor Jeremi Suri’s upper-level history seminar to understand and evaluate the potential of new technological devices to replace textbooks in the future.
“Textbooks as we have them are dinosaurs,” Brower said. “The question is what are they going to become and how are we going to shape them?”
Suri described the impacts of the Kindle DX as “overwhelmingly positive.” Flexibility, reduced textbook prices and convenience were among positive responses from students, he said.
However, the negative barrier the device poses to the blind was an issue Frazier said he felt needed to be addressed.
Frazier said he believes universities can play a large role in influencing the marketplace to do the right thing. Devices like the Kindle DX have the potential to create an enormous library of books currently unavailable to the blind, but the technology has to work for them, Frazier said.
Gregg Vanderheiden, professor of industrial and biomedical engineering and director of the UW Trace Research and Development Center, said he supports Frazier’s stance and described Amazon’s failure to create accessible menus and controls for the blind as shortsighted.
“I think it is exactly the correct decision. UW has a long reputation for embracing diversity and accommodating people with disabilities. There is no technical reason for the Kindle not to be accessible,” he said. “The university is a leader and innovator in the education field. For it to say we are not going to proceed with the Kindle if the Kindle is not designed for all students — that is significant.”
Vanderheiden and Frazier both predict the availability of fully accessible devices for the blind in the near future.
While the experiment with the Kindle DX in a UW course had both advantages and disadvantages, the future of technology in education is important, Brower said.
“Everyone gets to participate in the creation and sharing of knowledge. It is a really different and engaging way to think about knowledge and education and teaching others. I am looking forward to the way technology is pushing forward,” he said.
