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Date: | Sun, 17 Jan 2016 09:42:26 -0600 |
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This is interesting news. I just wish Amazon had better tech support. I got a Kindle Fire for Christmas and Amazon told me I would be able to use BrailleBack to read books. I installed BrailleBack without any difficulty and was able to operate the Kindle as much as I could find documentation. I was using a Braille Sense u2 Mini. The display was able to read some of the text in the book but when I tried to advance the text, the display skipped text. I also tried a Braille Edge thinking that a 40 cell display would be better and when I did that, the display wouldn't even read text.
I did some research on the Internet and contacted Google and was refered to someone by a fellow colleague at work. The person I contacted at Google said that the version of BrailleBack which Amazon uses isn't supported by Google. Google also mentioned that there are known issues with BrailleBack which they are working on. I also contacted the NFB Braille and Technology Center and they confirmed that there are known issues with Braille panning and that people need to ask Amazon to fix the problems.
I contacted Amazon and couldn't get any of the support people to understand what BrailleBack is. One of the techicians was trying to do diagnostics with Voice View and I told her that Voice View wasn't the problem. She kept putting me on hold and connected me with another technician who was equally clueless. To make matters worse, both of the people I spoke with had unintelligible Indian accents and kept interrupting me when I was trying to explain the problem. They put me on hold one to many times so I hung up. This was after an hour wasting my time.
I like the Kindle and feel that I should be able to read books in Braille especially considering that BrailleBack exists and does pair the Kindle with a Braille display. The customer service person I spoke with when I got the device assured me that the Kindle would read books using BrailleBack. I don't think it is too much to ask Amazon to fix the problems. Braille is still very necessary and important despite the negative things some blind people say on blogs that Braille isn't relevant.
If anyone has contacts at Amazon which would help me get through the red tape, I would appreciate it.
Thanks,
Dan
Sent from my iPhone
> On Jan 16, 2016, at 10:50 PM, David Goldfield <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> In some ways, this may be one of the more interesting assistive
> technology stories of 2016, even though Amazon likely didn't have that
> intention. I have always felt that one of the things which would make
> the Amazon Echo a more attractive device for visually impaired users was
> to allow it to read Kindle books. Well, RedmondPi reports this feature
> is now included in the Echo.
> http://www.redmondpie.com/amazon-echo-can-now-read-kindle-books-to-you/
> --
> David Goldfield, Assistive Technology Specialist Feel free to visit my
> Web site WWW.DavidGoldfield.Info
>
>
> VICUG-L is the Visually Impaired Computer User Group List.
> Archived on the World Wide Web at
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