The UK’s first online library of educational textbooks in a range of digital formats accessible to visually impaired students has been launched.
‘Books for All’ is a joint project between The Seeing Ear (http://www.seeingear.org/), a website which provides electronic books for visually disabled people, and the University of Edinburgh. It allows authorised and registered teachers and students with visual impairments to access an online catalogue of alternative format educational books for free.
Three major publishers in the US have decided to postpone e-book publication of their titles for 3–4 months after the publication of the hardback edition due to concerns over e-book pricing. This is relevant, as if similar procedures are followed in the UK it could impact on the Right to Read Alliance’s slogan of ‘Same book, same time, same price’.
This is relevant to anyone working on e-books, as it is believed that the Apple Tablet will transform the e-books market and become the desirable e-book reading device. Rumours have been circulating for some time, but one of the strongest rumours to date suggests that it is due in the spring.
This is relevant to anyone working on e-books. It highlights the growing trend toward wireless e-book reading devices, which will enable people to download e-books directly to their device without using a computer.
This is relevant to anyone working on newspapers or magazines, as many of these companies are international groups, so a similar move in the UK could be possible.
Five major publishers in the US have announced that they are to develop open standards for a new digital storefront that will allow consumers to enjoy their content on portable digital devices.
Amazon announced on Monday that they will add two features to the Amazon Kindle e-book reader – audible menus and an extra large font – to make it more accessible to blind and partially sighted people. The additions should be in place by summer 2010.
This is relevant to anyone working on e-books, particularly on accessible e-book readers.
In the US Intel have launched a ‘digital book reader’ specifically for those with print impairments. Notably, this does not seem to be for commercial e-books, it’s to enable you to scan books yourself, or to access books in DAISY or plain text formats from open sources. It’s due to be launched in the UK on 17 November, and will feature ‘a speaking voice with an English accent’. In the US it retails at $1,499, which is a lot more than mainstream devices.
A snippet from the article: ‘The reader can read digital files of books aloud. It can also capture images from any printed material and use its text-to-speech technology to read aloud the publication at a variety of listening speeds. It also has a four-inch color display that can render the words being read in large font sizes. The device can read millions of books that have been formatted online for visually-impaired readers, and it comes with a high-resolution camera that can convert printed text to digital text. The reader can then read the words aloud to the user. It can even work with web pages if users first capture the text from a site in a plain text file.’
Go here for the full article: http://bit.ly/2jnNU4
Go here to see a video of the device in use: http://bit.ly/1vpKPl
This is relevant to anyone working on e-books, and is illustrative of the growing market for e-books. “Foyles’ online store will carry 57,000 e-book titles and the retailer will sell the BeBook Mini device at a £20 discount for £159. The bookseller will also retail Sony’s Touch Edition and Pocket Edition e-readers.”
For Foyle’s e-book store go here: http://www.foyles.co.uk/ebooks.asp?
This is relevant to anyone working on e-books, particularly those concerned with screen contrast levels, as it seems to offer better contrast than many e-book readers currently available.
This is relevant to anyone working in educational publishing. Pearson are, of course, parent company of the trade publisher Penguin and the Financial Times Group.
“At the Assistive Technology Industry Association’s (ATIA) conference in Chicago, the education services and technology company Pearson today announced new Pearson HTMLbooks™, digital versions of the company’s course materials designed for students with learning, print, speech and language disabilities; auditory learners; children with autism; struggling readers; and homeschoolers.”
This will be of interest to anyone working with e-books or access technology, and offers an exciting alternative to Adobe Digital Editions. New e-book reading software has been announced which will revolutionise access to e-books for print impaired people. K-NFB Reading Technology, Inc., the world-renowned pioneer in reading technologies, and Baker & Taylor, Inc., the world’s largest distributor of physical and digital books and entertainment products, have announced a partnership to supply digital content for a newly developed e-book reading software created in collaboration with the National Federation of the Blind.
The software will be offered to consumers for free, and it is expected to be launched in the US at the end of November. It supports text-to-speech, and notably, will run on laptops and desktop computers (PCs and Macs) as well as netbooks and mobile phones – Windows mobile and the iPhone right away with other mobile phone operating systems added as quickly as possible. The software can read any format from straight text to PDF and ePub (files are converted into ‘their own format’), and the text-to-speech will synch with the text display to highlight each word as it is spoken.
Publishers Weekly Article: http://bit.ly/zSqCJ
US NFB press release: http://bit.ly/2HXQy3
Interesting article from the Telegraph on the interest in e-books in libraries.
This article illustrates publishers’ concerns that e-book readers are stimulating the e-book reading market rather than the e-book buying market. Four percent of British people have read an e-book in the past month but the majority of them spent nothing on the title, according to a new survey.
This is relevant to anyone working on e-books/e-book readers – one of the latest offerings in the US.
Barnes & Noble have just launched their ‘Nook’ e-book reading device, which runs on Android OS. While it does not include TTS functionality, it seems to be more interoperable than the Kindle, in that it includes a ‘LendMe function’, which allows owners to ‘lend’ titles to owners of other Nooks, iPhones, or other smartphones that have the Barnes & Noble software. Readers can also browse through complete e-books for free on their Nooks when they’re in any Barnes & Noble store.
This is relevant to anyone working on e-books, or concerned with book piracy and/or DRM.
It provides a good overview of the current publishing landscape with regard to piracy, DRM and pricing.
