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A Kindle and Dyslexia related press release reminded me of the fact that the Kindle is potentially great for children with a learning disability. A lady had written in about how the Kindle helped her daughter who used to have problems reading -

1. Her daughter used to not read much at all. 
2. When the Kindle’s larger font option was set her daughter suddenly liked reading – it was no longer difficult.
3. It got her daughter into reading.

She was just so happy about it and it makes you realize the benefits of the Kindle for children with a learning disability like dyslexia.

Dyslexia and Statistics

Wikipedia says that dyslexia affects 5% to 17% of the U.S. population -

It is estimated that dyslexia affects between 5% to 17% of the U.S. population.[2]

Basically, there are lots of competing theories about exactly what causes Dyslexia and how to help people -

Dyslexia is thought to be the result of a neurological defect -

 it is variously considered a learning disability, a language disability, and a reading disability, among others.

Dyslexia is diagnosed in people of all levels of intelligence.

There are a few interesting theories -

1. People with dyslexia have other strengths i.e. they are better than normal in spatial tasks etc.  
2. That we should focus on using strategies that maximize these strengths.  
3. Dyslexia might be related to visual issues i.e. cluttering of words makes it difficult to read.

For me there were two big takeaways -

1. People with dyslexia can ‘hear’ and thus access books at a higher level than they can read.
2. Larger font sizes and more spacing between words MIGHT help children with dyslexia read better.

Remarkably, the Kindle provides both.

The Kindle, Dyslexia and Learning Disability

The Kindle is the only eReader that has taken the step of adding a text to speech feature.

1. Although some Publishers opt out of the feature there are still lots of books with the text to speech enabled.
2. All public domain books can be used with the text to speech feature.
3. Any of your own documents and all converted books can be used with the text to speech feature.

Kindle also has a good set of stereo speakers. Note that the Sony Touch Edition doesn’t have speakers, only an audio outlet.

That suddenly opens up a huge number of books to dyslexic children.

As far as getting TTS rights - Instead of forcing universities to boycott Kindle 2, rights activists should get Publishers to release Text to Speech reading rights – either for everyone, or a special override switch for anyone who can prove they have learning disabilities.

Bonus of Font Sizes and Line Spacing.

The Kindle also lets you change font size and spacing i.e.

1. The Aa button brings up the Font Size Menu which lets you pick 1 of 6 font sizes. 
2. That same menu lets you pick number of words per line. 
3. You can use Alt+Shift+1 through Alt+Shift+9 to change the space between lines.  (Shift is the Up Arrow button).
4. The Font Menu also lets you choose landscape mode or portrait mode (including on the Home Page).

For someone with dyslexia, Kindle lets them choose the number of words per line, space between lines, and the font size. PERHAPS that makes reading less challenging for them.

Perhaps your kid is like the lady’s daughter and will suddenly love reading again.

The video demonstrates the sizes etc. – please let me know if you have a request and I’ll add a video or photographs to help you figure out the size and what reading on the Kindle will be like (also check my kindle review videos).

Non-obvious Benefits

• The Press Release talked about how using a Kindle doesn’t carry a social stigma - that’s true as it’s a main-stream device.
• You also get audiobooks from Audible.com or any that are in mp3 format.
• You get free Internet.
• Free Wikipedia.
• Background music.

Do keep in mind that the menus and browser are not ‘zoomable’. You can flip the menu to landscape mode.

Is the Kindle a good fit for dyslexic children and children with learning disabilities?

Perhaps. It definitely lets you listen to a lot of books and play around with different font sizes.

1. What are the other needs of kids with learning disabilities?
2. How much of a boost will kids get from being able to access more books?
3. Will the font size options allow them to read books that they otherwise would struggle with?

Not fully aware of all the needs – please leave your comments and questions.

The Kindle is definitely worth taking a look at – it does seem like a good fit for any children with dyslexia or a reading related learning disability.

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As I mentioned in my earlier post on using Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala the Epiphany devs stopped supporting the Gecko rendering engine and switched to exclusively supporting the WebKit engine. While I understand their decision, I don’t think Epiphany/WebKit is quite ready for prime time, although I was willing to continue using it as my default browser. As I used Epiphany/WebKit I was left with the feeling that there are too many things about Epiphany/WebKit that simply pisses me off too much to let it remain as my default web browser. Among the issues that left me banging my head against a brick wall are

• Epiphany-extensions-more is uninstallable in karmic (Launchpad bug #452845). That leaves the third-party extensions needing to be manually installed, but there’s no guarantee that they will work, because…
• Add-ons need to be rewritten to work with the WebKit engine. That leaves some of my MustHave extensions broken, including Middle Click Tab Close, New Blank Tab, Window Icon, AWN Favicon, and Video Downloader.
• Opening links in a new tab can be completely impossible, especially in Gmail but not necessarily on other Google sites (LP bug #272808). To add insult to injury, if you click on a link on an offending site it opens the link in a window so small as to be completely useless without resizing it. (screenshots available in my comment on that bug).
• Login information is no longer saved (LP bug #483566). This leaves you having to manually enter login information to sites you’ve visited many times before, even with Epiphany/karmic, and had the temerity to log out or the site automatically times out your session.
• If you click a link to download an archive or a software package Epiphany complains that the file could damage your system and offers to let you download it instead, presenting you with options to “save as…” and “download” (LP bug #151787). In addition, right clicking on an image and selecting to save it results in a dialog complaining that Epiphany has no idea what application to open the file in. This may be the same issue, but I can’t find another bug that fits it better.
• Epiphany refuses to recognize apturl links as an authorized method of installing software (LP bug #235128).
• There’s no way to get favicons, the icons provided by web servers to visually identify the website you’re on (LP bug #355755). While some users like not having favicons on their browser tabs many of us so want it.
• Closing a tab with a form, with fields filled out or not, will get you a dialog warning that there are unsaved form elements (LP bug #21597).
• While we finally have a working spell checker, the UI sucks. There’s no way to easily tell the browser to always check your spelling, leaving you to manually right-click to make sure the spell checker is on for a text field. To make matters worse, once it’s enabled you have to manually right-click and tell Epiphany to Check Document Now to move to the next typo. Talk about a pain in the rump.
• If you find a typo with the spell checker and select the correct spelling, the typo is removed but the correct spelling isn’t inserted in its place (LP bug #460450).

That’s not even an exhaustive list of the things in Epiphany/karmic that makes me go “Grrrrr!” As much as I liked using Epiphany/Gecko under Ubuntu 9.04 it’s simply pissing me off too much to use it as my default browser any longer, so I switched to Chromium. While Chromium isn’t perfect, and there are things that don’t work quite as well as I’d like it to, it definitely works better than Epiphany/WebKit. And thanks to the Ubuntu Chromium Daily Builds Team’s PPA I get updates to Chromium on a daily basis so I can see fixes almost as soon as they’re released. The biggest PITA bug that I’m waiting to get fixed is one I posted, Issue 28517: Can’t import bookmarks from Epiphany. Until it’s fixed I’ve added a link to my Epiphany bookmarks file on my Bookmarks Bar so I can get at it easily when I need it. I’m also unable to add words to my spell check dictionary for some odd reason, but at least when I select a correct spelling the error gets corrected and not just wiped out.

While you can use extensions in Chromium the devs haven’t opened the extensions gallery, you can find some installable extensions at the Google Chrome Extensions site. Among the extensions I already have installed are

• AdBlock+ 1.1.9.9 – It doesn’t work as transparently as Firefox’s AdBlock+ works, and I can’t seem to able to block ads in Gmail, but hopefully that will change before too long. I just saw the AntiADS extension and it seems working better than AdBlock+.
• Bookmarklets Manager 3.2.0 – A great way to add and use bookmarklets, although several of my search bookmarklets don’t want to work. It may be due to Issue 2238: Add search engine dialog doesn’t allow “{” (open curly brace); can interfere with javascript.
• New Tabs Always Last 0.1 – Sometimes I just don’t want a new tab opened next to the active tab, like 90% of the time I click a link on my custom start page. This extension brings the behavior I want, and I can always disable it if I want new tabs opened next to my active tab and not at the far right of my tab bar.
• Tabs to the front 0.1 – Like it says on the tin, because I hate having to manually select a tab I just opened from a link.
• YouTube Downloader 1.1 – While not as feature rich as the Firefox Video DownloadHelper extension in that I can’t download my local television news videos or MLB highlight videos, it does bring one killer feature to the table: Easy to find buttons to select which version of the video you want to download, as shown in the image on the right (click the image for the full size image in a new window).

There’s also one killer feature to Chrome’s add-ons. You don’t need to close Chrome to get the benefits of an extension. Yep, you can use a new extension as soon as it’s installed. The same goes for enabling/disabling an add-on. I seem to remember hearing that other browsers can do that (I know Epiphany can), but Chrome/Chromium kicks Firefox’s tail on this count.

There are a couple of other bugs that may keep some users from switching to Chromium full-time. The first is that Chromium doesn’t seem to know how to open PDF files (Chromium issue 19587). I can’t open PDF’s in Epiphany either, so downloading PDF files is one more thing I keep Firefox around for. I also can’t drag a URI from Chromium to the desktop (issue 24210) to remind me to get back to the page. If you’ve created a bookmark on your desktop with another browser Chromium can’t open it either (issue 27339).

If you’re unhappy with Firefox and Epiphany and are looking for a browser that can make it easier to surf the web you should definitely look into Chromium. You may find that it’s just what the doctor ordered.

Martyn Daniels at Brave New World talks about the various ‘exclusive’ and limited edition Sony Reader offerings in the UK -

1. Mills and Boon Exclusive Edition. 
2. Harlequin Romance Limited Edition. 
3. Danielle Steel Limited Edition. 
4. John Lewis Exclusive (John Lewis is a store).  
5. Michael Connelly limited edition.
6. Debbie Macomber limited edition.
7. Ian Fleming and James Bond Limited Edition Sony Reader.
8. James Patterson Sony Reader. 

Perhaps 8 is a bit much. However, Sony do have the right idea.

Readers want choice – they want something that suits them and can be personalized

Consider all the criteria on which people choose devices (beyond the functionality) -

1. How does it look? 
2. Is it cool?
3. Is it in fashion?
4. Does it suit me?
5. What does it say about me? 

Sony is providing a lot of options – the colors, the limited edition devices. It increases the chance readers find a version that uniquely suits them.

Beyond Choice, we want personalization and customization

After buying anything we personalize it -

1. Covers and sleeves for the eReader. 
2. Stickers and magnets on the Fridge.
3. Themes and wallpapers for our computers.

The device becomes an extension of us.

We want to be able to customize it and personalize it and make sure that it fits.

Which brings us to eReaders

We have already lost all the benefits books had i.e.

1. We could tell people who we were via our libraries.
2. The book we carried was an instant advertisement.
3. Each book had its own character and its own message.
4. We could share books and capture imaginations.

What can eReaders do to give us back  our signalling options?

Actually quite a lot. To be fair they are doing some of this already -

1. Special Back Covers like Nook has.
2. $110 Cole Haan covers like Kindle has.
3. Designer covers.
4. Limited Edition and Exclusive eReaders.
5. Kindle Skins.  
6. Higher end eReaders.

However there is a lot more that can be done -

1. eInk back screen that changes according to the book.
2. Laser etching and casing customization.
3. Author and Book specific editions that are completely built around the author – not just a different color.
4. A ton more customization options in the eReader itself – fonts, themes, screensavers.

There are a lot of other things that probably need more thinking or more evolution of eInk.

The big opportunities in personalization

Whatever companies comes up with -

1. A high-end model that just screams coolness.  
2. An add-on that instantly signals identity.

Will make a killing.

If analysts are right and eReaders are a 20-30 million units a year business by 2013, some company is going to be selling a lot of eInk back-covers and premium leather cases.

A L’Oreal advert fronted by Cheryl Cole is at the centre of a row after viewers accused the X Factor judge of misleading them.

Cole, 26, appears in a television ad in which she sings the praises of L’Oreal Elvive Full Restore 5, a shampoo and conditioner range. Thirteen viewers have complained to the Advertising Standards Authority about the commercial because Cole wears hair extensions.

The authority, however, rejected the claims as a message is shown during the advert, which says that Cole’s hair is styled with some natural extensions.

It is worth noting that the hair extensions are made from natural hair.
 
A problem would only arise if the ad did not make clear that she is wearing these extensions. It is also worth noting that the hair extensions are made from natural hair and have been treated with the products that are being advertised.

However, Cole’s hairdresser Julien Guyonnet has reportedly revealed that she uses artificial fibre extensions because the glue used for natural ones was damaging her hair.

While L’Oreal spokesperson said that they were unaware of Cole’s artificial extensions, Cheryl Cole said that the ad is not breaking any rule. The company doesn’t have to comment anything about what type of hair extensions as these are personal questions.

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