When my book Injustice launched last October, I was attacked for describing the radical policy of Eric Holder’s Civil Rights Division as it relates to Kindles with talk features. The DOJ flexed its muscle and prevented the launch of the new Kindle because it did not have a button in Braille to make it talk. You can read all the details of the absurd radical program in my book Injustice (which I am shamelessly compelled to mention hit the New York Times bestseller list).
Naturally, the left went crazy – which is always a good sign you’ve hit a nerve. If they don’t feel pain, they don’t yell.
Eric Holder is at it again, pushing a radical disability policy. (No, this one does not involve recruiting the mentally ill to work as lawyers at DOJ. That was last week’s radical disability policy.) This week, Eric Holder is stopping libraries from making available Kindles that don’t have Braille push-to-talk buttons.
The U.S. Justice Department says it has reached a settlement with the Sacramento (California) Public Library over a trial program the library was conducting that let patrons borrow Barnes and Noble NOOK e-book readers.
DOJ and the National Federation of the Blind objected to the program on grounds that blind people could not use the NOOK e-readers for technological reasons.
The Justice Department said the settlement is aimed at stopping discrimination: “Emerging technologies like e-readers are changing the way we interact with the world around us and we need to ensure that people with disabilities are not excluded from the programs where these devices are used,” said Assistant Attorney General Thomas E. Perez in a news release.
The name Tom Perez will be familiar to PJ Media readers. He is the truth-challenged head of the infamous Civil Rights Division. Let’s get this straight – DOJ threatened to sue a library because they gave out e-readers. Because the versions of these e-readers don’t have an easy push to talk feature, DOJ threatened to sue under the Americans With Disabilities Act. To get the machines to talk, it takes more than a one-push button. And therein lies the DOJ complaint. Never mind the alternative is a paper book. An e-reader isn’t good enough to people out to change the world, and federal muscle followed.
Most sane Americans recognize advancements like the Kindle or Nook as amazing achievements. When they hear about this absurd DOJ policy, laughter follows. To regular common sense Americans, the federal government suing to stop a library from giving away a Kindle is a whiff shy of crazy. But to bureaucrats at the DOJ and their radicalized political overseers, the Kindle, as constituted, represents discrimination against the disabled.
When you are done laughing, consider that they don’t think it is funny. In fact, if you scrutinize DOJ policies, they will call you mean and cruel, sort of like the reflexive branding as racists that their ideological comrades have employed recently.
Consider Sam Bangenstos. He used to be a political appointee under Perez and is probably the architect of some of the nuttier policies of this administration. He naturally finds a home in academia where he opines about disability policy. When I reported a straight factual recitation of their policy here at PJ Tatler, Bagenstos huffed on Twitter my reporting on these facts was “hateful and ignorant.” Never mind the story had not a word of opinion. It was all facts, facts that harm his cause if widely known.
Sam Bagenstos
Bagenstos is the same person who was once ridiculed by a federal court for producing amateur work. As Hans von Spakovksy wrote at National Review, Bagenstos is responsible for this laugher:
Bagenstos recently appeared in federal court in New York, arguing against a motion to dismiss one of the Division’s lawsuits. The Division’s complaint was so badly written under Bagenstos’s supervision that the judge at one point compared the government’s pleading to that of a pro se litigant, which is as close as a federal judge can come to calling you incompetent.
But none of this criticism matters to these folks because they live in a bubble. If you write about this absurd Kindle settlement, they tut-tut at you. If you laugh at these absurd policies, then they turn surly. Such are the luxuries of academia. But in most parts of the nation, these radical policies have crippled businesses. That’s why in a few short months, many more of those “who can’t” will be looking for jobs with Bagenstos in the ivory tower. Even if they write like a pro se litigant, nothing will slow them down.
They make shells/skins for handheld devices that could have braille on the buttons. The average user won’t need them, but shells/skins go for around $10.
In today’s world of customization and personalization in the electronics worlds, it’s absurd and ignorant of the DOJ to launch this attack.
I just did a quick Google search, and found out that a company called Omnifer already makes braille iPad cases so that blind people can use them.
Problem solved DOJ. Now you can go back to suing states over Voter ID laws.
This is probably not funny but I used to wonder how does a blind person know where the braille elevator buttons are (the outside up and down buttons) located? The buttons are probably where someone showed or told them where to find the buttons. These people (lawyers) have way to much time on their hands may I suggest they count and categories their navel lint.
I think they should outlaw ipods because there is no button that can translate the music into color, taste, and feelings. It is not fair to deaf people that they can’t experience music from an iPod.
What, they can’t simulate synethesia on an iPod? Outrageous! I am going to march to Washington! It is just not fair.
I haven’t paid close attention, but when I bought my Kindle Amazon was having lots of legal trouble with the text-to-talk feature. They wanted to make *all* books convertible to this feature, but the publishers balked and essentially anything that had a copyright wasn’t text-to-talk “enabled.” You were left with the Bible, Sherlock Holmes, Shakespeare, and Mark Twain, etc. Almost anything that’s published currently has an “audio” version of the book, and the publisher hires someone to read the book, adds music to the intro, etc., and charges more for it. A computer program to render the text as computerized speech would probably undermine this greatly, so the publishers were opposed, and since they hold copyright on the product, their wishes were upheld. Even if they hadn’t made an audio recording of a book, they didn’t want to take the chance of it suddenly becoming popular, so that they would want to record one and charge more for it in the future.
So the DOJ is suing to insist that a function that’s almost completely useless be installed on e-readers? Or did they change the policy somehow?
You guys just don’t get it. It’s discriminatory to to hand out Kindles and nooks. Not because it has no features for the deaf, but because EVERYONE knows that the only tablet someone should get is an iPad, and not that WiFi only version. I hope they go after Dunkin Donuts next and force them to start selling Starbucks coffee.
I gotta stop doing that. Thinking like a liberal drains all the blood out of my brain and gives me a huge headache.
Darn those affordable ereaders. Everyone should just walk out back to the money tree in their backyards and pick some green to buy a fancy iPad (or the much more expensive version of a Kindle that has the required braille translation thingy).
I know thingy is not a real word, but it is fun to play with words.
Also, shouldn’t the library also be forced to ban audiobooks. It is not fair to the deaf.
A thought that just sparked in my mind. Blind folks aside, I wonder how ereaders and tablets have impacted the lives of the deaf and those who have trouble with verbal communication; stroke victims, autistic individuals, extreme introverts to name a few. I used to know a man who could not speak due to a stroke, he just had a verbal tic that he repeated again and again, but he was capable of communicating with a computer.
There are apps for nook, for free, for words for autistic kids to turn a nook into a communication device. the app has a website, and a non- profit run by very motivated parents.
The DOJ is a monkey: audio books cost money to produce. They are a second income stream for independent writers. They cost to produce. They have a different audience than print books. Forcing e-readers into a robotic audio-voice so that a fraction of the population can violate copyright all over the place is doing violence to the market. Individuals have made several different audio recordings of Jane Austen, for instance. People have preferences about the voice, and about the quality of the recording.
I bought some 99 cent recordings of classic fairy-tales done pro-bono for blind readers. The stories were out of copyright. I’d pay more for one with a voice actor and background sound. There was some awful nasal man in a creaky apartment- you could hear it- whinging on. The DOJ wants to enforce what? Robotic voice software, or a market for volunteer e-readers with no skills?
My sister is blind and has been using a Kindle for years. We bought it for her birthday specifically because of the text-to-speech feature. She LOVES it and navigates it just fine. Actually, the Kindle is very friendly as is for the visually impaired because of the placement of the buttons. This is just another example of the incompetence of the DOJ. But it’s also very condescending to the blind. How do they think blind people function? How do they think the blind run the dishwasher, do laundry, grocery shop, take the bus, prepare meals, etc.
The is no Star Trek Universal Translator on any hand held device
OUTLAW ALL GLORIFIED PDA until this is a reality
real time audio translating is the baseline for compliance
I don’t care if CAIR cares
too bad so sad if the arabic crap that muslims spew is out in the open
What if the author doesn’t make a sound recording? Those things cost- voice actors, studio time, sound mixers, and who knows what else. Would the author get sued for not accomodating all customers?
Renaissance Nerd, a poster here, said he made $11 on his e-book, to date. Is he obliged to shell out $1,000+ dollars to make his story accessible?
The author of this article seems resentful at being attacked. But when you base an argument entirely on inaccurate reporting and setting up and then knocking down straw men, you can expect to be attacked. The author does not mention that federal law requires libraries not to discriminate against people with disabilities in any of their programs, including the purchase of technology. The NOOK, and the Kindle, don’t simply lack an “easy push-to-talk” button, nor was the complaint filed by the National federation of the Blind with the DOJ based on such an assertion. The NOOK can’t be used by a blind person at all. This would be one thing if it were impossible to design such a device that could be used by the blind. But it isn’t, as Apple has clearly demonstrated. (And for some reason, all of Apple’s iBooks can be read aloud. Apparently either the publishers dropped their specious objections to text-to-speech, or else Apple didn’t fold like a cheap umbrella as Amazon did.) So the library deliberately chose to purchase a device that the blind couldn’t use rather than purchasing one that they could. For those who argue that this gives companies that make accesible products an unfair advantage, the solution is simple; If Barnes and Noble wants to sell NOOKS to libraries, schools, and other institutions that have legal obligations to people with disabilities, it can make them accessible. If it doesn’t, then it can forego selling to libraries, schools, etc and just stick to the direct consumer market. The blind need and deserve access to books like everyone else. If we don’t have it, then we do not become literate, educated people who work instead of collecting government benefits. It is possible, and not even difficult, for any e-book producer to make all of its content accessible to the blind, giving us access to more content than we have ever had in human history. Currently, even with commercial audio books, we get access to five percent (or less) of all published material. We will fight until we have full access, regardless of cheap shots, straw-man arguments, and ad hominem attacks like those on Tom Perez and Sam Bagenstos from the Internet peanut gallery.
here we go, the anonymous defender steps up. The nuttiness is on full display:
“The author does not mention that federal law requires libraries not to discriminate against people with disabilities in any of their programs, including the purchase of technology. The NOOK, and the Kindle, don’t simply lack an “easy push-to-talk” button, nor was the complaint filed by the National federation of the Blind with the DOJ based on such an assertion. The NOOK can’t be used by a blind person at all.”
Well neither do books. Books don’t talk. Books can’t be used by the blind either. Federal law might require libraries not to discriminate against the blind, but they already do by virtue of lending books. Behold the reasoning so prevalent among civil rights extremists like the anonymous poster. If you develop any new technology, it must be readable by the blind. This of course is the sort of extremist logic that results in people not developing new technology. It is the extremist logic that causes pools to close down beause they can’t afford the chair lift (yes, rules are delayed but the advocates, including probably the anonymous poster, still want them effective.)
This isn’t the internet peanut gallery. This is the real world, and particular people are behind particularly stupid policies, like suing libraries – and the people who work for us in the government that are responsible deserve to be called out. That’s how it works in a free country. Check out the First Amendment’s right to petition and speak. If you don’t want government officials to receive criticism, consider some alternative authoritarian countries where flowers, parades and joy heaped upon leaders is standard fare. Still looking for the cheap shot… maybe you mean the factual report on what a federal judge said to a government employee in court? See, that’s what the advocates do to protect their policies and policy makers from criticism – characterize statements made by a judge to a government official as a cheap shot. Keep trying Recovering Lawyer, keep trying.