Blio E-Book Launch Attracts Controversy

The Blio e-book store was meant to launch to increase accessibility of digital books content to the blind, but since the launch, the store founded by Ray Kurzweil and the National Federation for the Blind has attracted controversy rather than accolades. Critics are challenging Blio because it’s not quite fully accessible yet, and the software, currently only available on Windows machine, has known issues with text-to-speech conversions. For its part, the company is saying that it will release an update next week to help address some of these concerns, and will make more digital books accessible using its Blio platform. The company is also promising that a future update will work with Freedom Scientific’s JAWS screen reader technology for the blind in addition to Windows text-to-speech capabilities.

Blio says it will also launch on the iOS platform, making its reader software available to iPhone and iPad owners. The company had also announced previously that it would use technologies from Nuance to deliver a good text to speech experience.

Additionally, the company is at odds with Feedsbook. Blio has integrated Feedsbook library into its reader software without meeting all the stipulations of Feedsbook, an issue that Blio is attributing to some miscommunications.