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2012-02-10 16:00

Fictionwise.com Justifies Inaccessible eReader by Raising Copyright Concerns

16 August, 2009 @ 4:15 pm by Lioncourt

Gregory Kearney, Manager of Accessible Media at the Association for the Blind of Western Australia, contacted Fictionwise.com, the company which develops many popular e-book readers, including eReader for the Mac and iPhone, regarding the distinct lack of VoiceOver access in both versions of eReader. Below is their response:

Hi,

Unfortunately, the ability to scoop the ebook’s text using another application has been disabled for copyright-protection reasons.

Being able to scoop the text out, into another program, would allow for easy duplication of copyrighted materials.

Our software cannot be used with screen-reader software.

We apologize for the inconvenience.

Best Regards,

Ted
eReader.com Support Team

Apart from anything else, it can be strongly argued that VoiceOver is an integral part of both OS X and he iPhone OS, and therefore does not fall into the "other program" category. Prohibiting VoiceOver‘s access to the software could be compared to blocking the eReader application from displaying books on any third-party monitors connected via a display port.

Even if we assume that providing accessibility into the application could somehow lead to greater piracy of electronic texts, there are other alternatives, even if they may be less than optimal for the end user. These include, but are not limited to, providing built-in text-to-speech capability into the application, as Amazon’s Kindle 2 and many software applications have done. Unfortunately, such a solution is opposed by the Author’s Guild, on the erroneous notion that allowing TTS on e-book devices would compare with a human performance of an audio book.

However, in the end, this response from Fictionwise.com appears to illustrate the company’s sketchy understanding of VoiceOver and accessibility, as well as being an admission that the company is deliberately blocking access to VoiceOver users.

We encourage our readers to contact Fictionwise.com at <support@fictionwise.com> and voice your opinion on this issue.

Posted in Apple Inc., Commentary, iPhone, Mac OS X, Third-Party Products, VoiceOver | 4 Comments »

4 Responses to “Fictionwise.com Justifies Inaccessible eReader by Raising Copyright Concerns”

  1. atmac observed:

    Firstly, I don’t agree with blocking accessibility access, but the way the OS X accessibility API works – as I understand it – is that adding accessibility functions *does* mean that the text could basically be scooped up wholesale by any other program that accessed those APIs.

    It’s not comparable to blocking the books from displaying on a third monitor, it’s more comparible to blocking the ability to copy text from the program (which is, of course, also blocked).

    Think of a third party accessibility program like VisioVoice from AssistiveWare. That uses accessibility APIs to access text and read it out – to do that the programs have to give it access to the text to read out. These are the same APIs that let VoiceOver itself access the text.

    Unless my understanding of the way the OS X accessibility API works is fundamentally flawed, FictionWise.com is basically correct about the implications of accessibility. I don’t agree with their stance on DRM but I believe their technical summary is correct.

    - Ricky Buchanan

    August 17th, 2009 at 12:22 pm
  2. Lioncourt remarked:

    Ricky,
    You may be correct, hence the suggestion of alternatives, such as providing TTS in the book reader itself in our initial post. There are a variety of possible workarounds. It is time to educate and encourage these companies to explore alternatives if they are unable or unwilling to provide access.
    Regarding the display analogy…regardless of the technical aspects or implications, it stands that VoiceOver is a key component of OS X, and it serves as a display monitor of sorts for those with disabilities. Deliberately blocking access to content to a group via their necessary and system-based means of displaying that content is very much akin to blocking its display on a screen.
    Ultimately, the excuse that their hands are tied holds no water, and that was the point of this entry.

    August 17th, 2009 at 3:04 pm
  3. gkearney@gmail.com reflected:

    Regardless of how screen readers work in Australia, and Fictionwise is doing business here and so fall under Australian law, deliberately making a product inaccessible is not permitted.

    This is rather like building a new building with steps and then when confronted with the fact that it is not accessible as required by law announcing that the reason you did it was that you did not want disabled people in your building.

    I have yet to get any response back from Fictionwise asking for a clarification or a written statement. But it matters little here as an email is all we need to lodge a complaint against Fictionwise with the human rights tribunal. In Australia this is a matter of settled law with the Sydney Olympic Organising Committee case.

    August 17th, 2009 at 5:23 pm
  4. cfoxy observed:

    Surely it is against the law to deny people with disabilities access to information. I would have thought that it would be illegal under the US Section 501 Disability Act to prevent people with disabilities to access information. As the company is part of Barnes & Noble perhaps people should boycott their stores and website.

    August 19th, 2009 at 5:44 am

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