Right-to-read protest at Authors Guild draws 200

From Publishers Weekly. Here's The AP story.

Some 200 people with print disabilities--physical impairments that restrict their ability to read print--protested in front of the Authors Guild headquarters in New York April 7, rallying against the Guild's attempt to get Amazon to disable the Kindle 2's text-to-speech function. The protesters, led by the National Federation of the Blind, chanted “We want e-books!” “Literacy for all of us!” and “Two, four, six, eight, the Authors Guild discriminates!”

The demonstration follows Amazon's announcement that it plans to give authors and publishers the ability to disable the text-to-speech function on any of their e-books available for the Kindle 2. Protesters carried signs reading “Don’t Disable the Kindle,” “Throw the E-Book at the Authors Guild,” “Give Kindle the Freedom of Speech” and other slogans, while members of the Reading Rights Coalition spoke in front of the crowd through microphones and bullhorns.

“We’re extremely pleased with the turnout today,” said Chris Danielsen, director of public relations for the National Federation of the Blind. The group brought two busloads of people to the protest from Baltimore, where the federation is based, and other protesters came from Virginia, Pennsylvania, Connecticut and New Jersey.

Danielsen said he did not own a Kindle, but would if its text-to-speech function were enabled for all e-books—"as would 15 million other Americans who have print disabilities.”

Amazon will enable the Kindle's text-to-speech function if it has the permission of the rightsholder. Diane Grant, a blind student who traveled to New York from Baltimore for the protest, said she owns other devices to read books but has to scan titles in order to read them. Grant said she, too, would buy a Kindle if its text-to-speech function were enabled. Christy Lynch, who teaches braille in New Jersey, said she came to "celebrate a cause. Visually impaired people have the same rights as other people."

Paul Aiken, executive director of the Authors Guild, released an official statement in which he proposed taking advantage of an exception to the Copyright Act known as the Chafee Amendment, which permits the blind and others with certified physical print disabilities access to special versions, including audio versions, of copyrighted books.

“Technology makes this step easy,” he said, although fliers distributed by protesters today called the system “burdensome.”

Aiken also encouraged Amazon and other e-book device manufacturers to make devices with voice output capability that would include a braille keyboard and audible menu commands, and encouraged publishers to amend existing book contracts to allow voice-output access to others, including those with learning disabilities, that don’t qualify for special treatment under the Chafee Amendment.

“Today’s protest is unfortunate and unnecessary,” Aiken said. “We stand by our offer, first made to the federation’s lawyer a month ago and repeated several times since, to negotiate in good faith to reach a solution for making in-print e-books accessible to everyone.”