Three universities have answered the National Federation of the Blind’s call to not endorse Amazon.com (AMZN) Kindle DX as a textbook alternative on campus, and a spokesperson revealed that the Federation has contacted more universities to join the boycott.
In the past few weeks, Syracuse University, the University of Wisconsin, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have agreed not to support the device until it is more accessible for visually impaired students.
In an interview, Chris Danielsen, the federation’s Director of Public Relations, told GalleyCat: “It is certainly our intention to continue to reach out to more universities to make sure they take a stand … We are corresponding with people we know at various universities, sending out more general correspondence as well. More will be revealed as we implement it.” All year, the organization has defended the Kindle’s controversial text-to-speech function.
Danielsen concluded: “We want to make sure that universities encourage a paradigm of accessibility for blind students and for all of their students. Text-to-speech and eBook accessibility are potentially beneficial to a lot of different people. We ultimately believe that anyone should be able to buy an eBook and read it in the form which is best for their needs.”
