Amazon.com's new electronic book reader, Kindle 2, encountered early criticism from the Authors Guild over its text-to-speech feature, which reads e-books aloud -- prompting a partial backdown by Amazon. Now a collection of disability groups is demanding that Amazon fully restore Kindle 2's text-to-speech feature, calling it a "momentous" development for the blind and others.

The Authors Guild had argued -- in a New York Times op-ed and elsewhere -- that text-to-speech threatened to undermine the market for audiobooks without duly compensating authors and publishers. Amazon caved in somewhat, allowing authors and publishers to decide themselves whether to activate text-to-speech on Kindle titles.

Now disability groups are turning up pressure in the other direction. This week a number of organizations, including the National Federation of the Blind and the International Dyslexia Association, sent letters to major publishing houses that sell e-books on Kindle, demanding that the text-to-speech feature be restored.

Here's an excerpt from the letter to Simon & Schuster:

For a terribly long time those with print disabilities have been consigned to alternative formats with limited choices on expensive special purpose machines. Now that the opportunity for mainstream access to books on equal terms is possible, this community will not allow publishers and authors to deny them the right to read.

The letter goes on:

Should the publishing industry and Amazon accede to the Authors Guild’s stance and deny persons with disabilities the service of mobile access to e-books it offers to the public, they will be at risk of violating state civil rights laws that guarantee equal access to persons with disabilities, including the Massachusetts Equal Rights Act, California’s Unruh Act, the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination, and the Kentucky Civil Rights Act.

Looks like this story isn't over yet.

Here's a link to the full Simon & Schuster letter (pdf, 3 pages). Other letters went out to Random House, Penguin, HarperCollins, Macmillan, and Hachette Book Group.

Asked about the possibility of litigation, Chris Danielsen, a spokesman for the National Federation of the Blind, said "no litigation is planned at this time" and said it is "not the preferred solution" but didn't rule it out as an "absolutely last resort." He said the federation is trying to turn up the heat on authors and publishers over the Kindle text-to-speech issue and is planning a protest action outside the Authors Guild headquarters in New York on April 7.

Separately, Amazon on its Kindle blog said yesterday that it is working on giving the Kindle "navigation accessible to the blind" and plans to make that available in the future. The blog post did not give any further details.

Amazon spokesman Drew Herdener said the company had no comment on the disability groups' letters to publishers. He said Kindle 2's text-to-speech feature "is enabled on all titles today" but did not elaborate.