Amazon plans to roll out new Kindle features for blind and vision-impaired readers in 2010. According to an announcement on their site, the updates include audible menus and a new super-size font for easier navigation.
To make Kindle more useful for the blind, the Kindle team is currently working on an audible menuing system so blind and vision-impaired readers can easily navigate to books unassisted, in addition to listening to books as they can already do today with Read To Me. In addition, a new super size font will be added to Kindle, increasing the number of font sizes from six to seven. This seventh font size will be twice the height and width of the current largest font. These new features are scheduled for release by the summer of 2010.
Great move on Amazon’s part. I always thought the text-to-speech could really help the vision impaired and adding these features will finally make that possible.
