No Paperwhite Read-Aloud For You! FCC Again Lets Amazon And Friends Diss People With Disabilities, by David H. Rothman, posted by Sabrina I. Pacifici, BeSpacific Blog

http://www.llrx.com/features/fccrulingereaders.htm

Text to speech would cost a pittance to add to current E Ink readers like Amazon’s Paperwhite and the $200 Voyage. In fact, some earlier Kindles even came with read-aloud. No longer, though. With all the laws on the books, can’t Washington stop this dissing of people with disabilities?

In one form or another, the Kindle is so common that it’s become ‘The Official E-reader of the National PTA.’

Yet despite TTS’s potential benefits to millions of Americans, the Federal Communications Commission has just granted the e-reader industry another year’s exemption from the Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2010.

The waiver announced January 28 wouldn’t have necessarily guaranteed TTS. But long term, it still would have helped people ranging from vision-impaired 90-year-olds to school children with dyslexia. . . .