Kestrell

And the price is staying at $50. This is another relatively cheap way of getting Alexa. Since Alexa can be used to read Kindle ebooks and to start, pause, and further use Audible audiobooks, this makes it a great ebook reader for low-vision readers.
Added later: This tablet also includes VoiceView, Amazon's screen reader, and a screen magnifier.

When I tried installing this earlier this year when it first came out, I kept having an issue with Windows Journal Viewer that repeatedly interrupted the install process. Finally, last week I just uninstalled Windows Journal Viewer and the install completed.

Since then, I've been enjoying Amazon Kindle ebooks, but the Kindle format is not going to become my favorite format anytime soon, because accessibility is still pretty limited.

Basically, the Kindle ebooks are accessible in that they can be read aloud using the combination of the user's own screenreader and the Nuance text-to-speech engine included in the Kindle accessibility plug-in.

However, the user can only listen to the ebook, not access the text itself. Thus, as in the case of the art book I was reading, I couldn't find out how an artist's name or an art term was spelled. Also, one can only read by page or by sentence, so taking notes means you have to keep repeating an entire sentence until you get the words or quotes you want written down in another file.

The TTS also seems to insert lengthy pauses for white space, so sometimes I think it is done and scroll to the next page before the currant page is fully done being read. To scroll to the next page, one presses the right arrow, then hits control+r to read the page, although sometimes just pressing the spacebar reads the page. Control+shift+right arrow reads the next sentence, control+shift+left arrow reads the previous sentence. I find that I get less stutter when I read by sentence than when I read by page, which seems to sometimes jumble words.

I don't consider this restricted level of access to be sufficient for reading educational textbooks, but it does suit my very specific need to access art books, which are often too designy to scan easily, and the Kindle ebooks are often less expensive than the print books I would have to spend hours scanning. Also, of course, I can only read the Kindle ebooks on my PC, not my preferred reading device.

Bottom line: Kindle for PC with accessibility plug-in is worth trying out, although I recommend the user try playing wih some free Kindle ebooks before spending money on Kindle ebooks. Amazon still has a ways to go in making he Kindle for PC app fully accessible, bu it's definitely showing promise.

Links:
Amazon Kindle for PC with accessibility plugin download
http://www.amazon.com/kindle/accessibility
help and FAQ
http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/ref=hp_left_ac?ie=UTF8&nodeId=200596280
AccessWorld review
http://www.afb.org/afbpress/pub.asp?DocID=aw120506

according to this page on the
Princeton University Kindle Pilot Results
http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S26/64/38E35/index.xml?section=topstories

the pilot program was a success because it reduced the use of paper, while according to this Inside Higher Ed article
Highlighting E-Readers
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/02/23/ereaders

many students felt that the Kindle fell short of their needs.

The Princeton study attempts to separate the satisfied users from the rest of the users by calling the satisfied users "power users" while framing the dissatisfied users as less technologically adept, but in looking at the criticisms, I notice that many of the criticisms are highly relevant to people with learning and print disabilities, such as the lack of highlighting capability, or the inability to make annotations to PDF docs. The first article doesn't really frame these dissatisfactions as criticisms, however, but as quote suggestions unquote.

I'm also interested in hearing textbook publishers position on the Kindle read aloud feature, as this is another way that many students with print disabilities manage their reading. Are textbook publishers and individual professors going to allow this feature?

From The New York Times

June 15, 2009, 6:18 PM

Jeff Bezos: Kindle Books and Readers Are Separate Businesses
By
SAUL HANSELL

In the future, Amazon.com’s Kindle e-book reader will display more book formats beyond its own. And you should also expect to see Kindle books on a lot
more devices.

That was the clear implication of comments that Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s chief executive, made at a conference in New York Monday on disruptive business models.

Of course, Mr. Bezos didn’t release any details at the conference, which was sponsored by Wired magazine. (He’s just as secretive as Steve Jobs at Apple,
but he laughs more.) Mr. Bezos, however, talked about the Kindle in a way he hasn’t before: He described the hardware business and the e-book store as
separate.

Already, Kindle books can be read on Apple’s iPhone as well as Amazon’s own reader. Mr. Bezos said that the company hopes to make the e-books available
on other devices as well.

Read more at
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/15/jeff-bezos-kindle-books-and-readers-are-separate-businesses/