Kindled

I love reading. Did I say I love reading, most of my life I’ve been an avid reader. I’ve read until my eye’s have bled. Nothing like your imagination and a good story to take you anywhere or anyplace in time and space. As I’ve aged I’ve lost the ability and the energy to read unaided. Reading with a CCTV is a good solution but the best solution for me has been to scan and read books on the computer using Kurzweil 3000.
Recently I’ve made the decision to switch from Windows to the Mac. Personally I find the way fonts are rendered and the graphical user interface easier for me to deal with. I can work on my Mac all day with minimal fatigue on a Windows machine I can work for an hour then I need to take a break and I am worn out by the end of the day. In my migration to the Mac I downloaded the Amazon.com software, Kindle for the Mac, its been a dream.
There are some books I’ve needed to read for work that are available on the Kindle. I downloaded them from Amazon.com and started reading. The Kindle interface is basic but you can enlarge the fonts for the text making it easier to read. My hope is in future the Kindle software will have an interface to integrate with software products like Kurzweil 3000. Having the spoken word and enlarged text is what works best for me. That being said having the ability to read off the shelf books without having to buy the book, cut off the book binding, scan the book, then read it, is awesome. Cuts down on a lot of logistics. I can’t wait for the day that all content is available electronically.
Having all content available electronically is naive. I will still use a multi pronged approach to reading. CCTV for quick and dirty short reading and for things I can cut up to scan. Scanning for books and periodicals that are not available digitally. Kindle for digital books from Amazon. It’s so awesome to get a new method for accessing content. Thank you Amazon.com.
To those in the publishing community that are resisting Armazon.com providing speech capability to the Kindle. Get with it. Having the spoken word all be it digitally with a computer voice opens up so much more of the content for all of us disabled or not.
Besides I can already scan your hardcopy book and turn convert it to speech. So???