FW: USA: Online book-sharing service for the blind borrows a page from Napster

[Patricia Logan]

     Right on, Ann!  My feelings about this almost completely 
duplicate yours.  The blindness esbablishment as well as the 
sighted world in computers, when they can't blackmail us into 
suffering with Windows for employment purposes, try the carrot 
as well as the stick.  They offer us things we would very much 
love to have, such as a wider variety of reading material, if 
and only if ...

     Janina, perhaps it might we worthwhile to compile a list 
of names of people who would use the book sharing service if 
the site and files were made linux and lynx accessible.   There 
may well be enough of us to put pressure on them big time.  If 
you make that list please add my name, resident of New York, 
NY, under Ann's.

     Pat Logan
On Tue, 12 Mar 2002, Ann Parsons wrote:

> Hi Janina,
> 
> Well, I found that it was virtually impossible to get at the site
> during the beta.  I found that the application was only a long, long,
> long, long, long agreement with several check boxes, but there was no
> place to add an address, a name of anything else!  I haven't been back
> there because it says on the top of the page that "this site is for
> users of MSIE5.5 or above."  I just didn't bother.  I figured that
> there was nothing I could do.  My Windows computer has been down for
> two months, and I want so much to download books and to join, but what
> can I do?  I have some books here I've scanned that I might
> conceivably want to upload there, but nobody deigned to say anything
> to me.  I'm on the beta list.  Nobody bothered to talk to me at all,
> find out *why* I was unhappy with the site, or what I was
> experiencing.  In fact, they just about ignored me cuz I use Linux.
> It was made very, very, very, very, very, very clear that I was just
> chopped liver and so I haven't bothered to even try to access the site
> in Lynx.  I figured that it would be virtually impossible, so I've
> been waiting for my Windows machine to get fixed, and now I discover I
> have to wait more time!
> 
> Janina, I hate Windows, but I want to join Bookshare`!  I want to
> download books!  It won't do me any good to go there anyway in Lynx
> cuz the unpack tool is for Windows, or didn't you realize that?  Sure
> they're looking for somebody to write their program for Linux because
> they've finally awakened to the fact that maybe somebody ought to pay
> attention to another OS.  But what's the good of writing an unpack
> tool for Linux when the site is "only for MSIE5.5 or above"?  I mean
> if you're going to be *that* exclusive, what's the good, Janina?  What
> about people who only have MSIE4 or Netscape or PW-Webspeak or IBM web
> reader?  What about those peopoe, huh?  Do they know how snooty and
> exclusive that phrase sounds?  Do they realize how it looks?  Haven't
> we had enough of being shut out?  
> 
> If my Windows machine isn't up yet, and if I only have Linux, then
> downloading an unpack tool for Windows isn't going to do me a hoot in
> Hell.  Maybe that's why everybody has been ignoring me, eh?  I'm
> sorry, Janina, but you asked me, and I'm telling you.  I feel shut
> out, ignored, and thrown away.  The site is for "MSIE5.5 or later", it
> says so right on the page, damn it!!!  It's supposed to be for the
> blind.  It's supposed to be so that we can access books!  It's
> supposed to be a tool to help us, and it's just another fanthom,
> supposedly accessible but only if you have the right equipment.
> <sigh>  What about people who use W3, what about them?  What about
> people who have shell accounts, there are some, you know.  They're
> limited to Lynx.  I'm sorry, Janina, but I'm disgusted and feeling
> angry and really quite upset.  I didn't realize how upset I was till
> you asked me how I was doing.
> 
> Ann P.
> 
>