Accessibility

Simon & Schuster has signed an agreement with Bookshare, a nonprofit that supplies reading materials to people with print disabilities, to provide the organization with its frontlist titles in EPub format. Every month, S&S will send Bookshare its new books from all imprints for distribution to its members.

Bookshare has 90,000 members. In a press release, Jim Fruchterman, CEO of Benetech, the non-profit organization behind Bookshare, said, “this substantial commitment brings the world one step closer to the vision of equal access to print materials for individuals with print disabilities.”

Launch a social media campaign that will build your brand and deliver results in our online Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting June 7. Speakers include Abigail Cusick (Bravo Digital), Gregory Galant (Sawhorse Media), Alex Leo (Thomson Reuters Digital), Jim Tobin (Ignite Social Media), and many more. Read the reviews.

When Kindle came out with Amazon touting its accessibility features–text-to-speech for books and magazines, which was swiftly turned off by publishers fearful of losing Audiobook revenue–there was a huge backlash from the visually impaired community. According to an article from Forbes.com, “Amazon failed to fully consider what would be required for a blind person to successfully navigate the Kindle’s menus without assistance.” Basically, Amazon set it up so a blind user would need to the help of a sighted user to choose and open a book. Ugh.

It looks like Apple won’t make the same mistake. iPad comes with VoiceOver, the company’s standard accessibility feature, which is also packed into Macs. It reads text aloud and also speaks a description of menu choices and other onscreen items.

This is not a way for sneaky and cheap audiobook addicts to avoid paying for their audiobooks; it’s an important way into reading for the visually impaired. Remember that, publishers.

To check out another amazing reading device for the visually impaired, click over to our video review of the Intel Reader.

Flat World Knowledge, publisher of digital college textbooks, and Bookshare, the accessible online library for people with print disabilities, have announced a content partnership for college textbooks. Flat World, which was founded in February, publishes open college textbooks, meaning they can be custom tailored online for particular classes; so far the company has 480 participating colleges. The online books themselves are free, and Flat World’s makes money by selling things like black and white or color versions of the custom books.

The agreement initially covers eleven titles, with an additional fifty in the works to be released over the next two years. Flat World will provide XML files of their textbooks directly to Bookshare, which will make them available to its 75,000 members through its online system.

Eric Frank, co-founder of Flat World, told eBookNewser his company sees three major advantages of this deal: first, said Frank, “it’s morally the right thing to do.” Second, it’s in sync with national accessibility goals; finally, “we do believe if all other things are equal, if a faculty member is evaluating our book and someone else’s, this can be a decisive factor–this can be read by everybody.”

The usual method for providing textbooks to visually impaired students is to hand-scan them, which, according to Betsy Burgess, director of marketing for Bookshare,”introduces errors into students’ textbooks, and can cost anywhere from 11 to 1,000 dollars per book. Flatworld are the first to provide digital files from the beginning, so this means that all those kids who have print disabilities and are dropping out will have better chances at an eduction.”