On December 12, 2012, at 11:00 a.m. PST, over a hundred members and supporters of the National Federation of the Blind will participate in a protest outside of Amazon.com’s headquarters in Seattle. David A. Paterson, the fifty-fifth governor of the state of New York, will also be participating. The informational picket will raise awareness of a recent push by Amazon to put Kindle e-books, which are inaccessible to blind students, into K-12 classrooms across the country.
The action comes on the heels of Amazon’s launch of Whispercast, a system designed to allow teachers and school administrators to push Kindle e-books to different devices, theoretically allowing the sharing of content among devices brought to school by the students. Kindle content, unlike some other e-book products, is not accessible to blind students, even on devices that are themselves accessible to the blind, such as personal computers and iPads. For more information about the protest or this important issue, please visit nfb.org/kindle-books.
Watch a promotional video about this subject on YouTube, or download a video demonstrating the inaccessibility of Kindle e-books.
Source: National Federation of the Blind
Contact: Chris Danielsen, Director of Public Relations, National Federation of the Blind
(410) 659-9314, extension 2330 / (410) 262-1281 (Cell) [email protected]
