Kindle’s Variable Font Feature – Threat to Large Print Book Industry
Kindle's variable font size feature is a threat to large print industry and the vision going stronger with its new slated release of Kindle 2. Well! if you passed off books with extra large fonts as kindergarten stuff, you just got it all wrong now. We are conditioned to think of great books and serious reads to be in a certain format and font. The very image of a best seller in your mind will look like a conventional 200 or 300+ paged book with fonts between 10 to 12 pt in size. Oh I know it is a juicy feeling to even look at the thickness of a novel and the small fonts weaving in stories beautifully. Thicker book and smaller fonts meant more pages of content, more drama, more information, more knowledge and more value for money. But at the back of your mind maybe you did care, you did hope, if you could read all that data with less strain in the eye. But can you ever imagine carrying a 10,000 page best seller with 1 inch high letters printed on them? Funny! Isn’t it?
But believe it or not, Amazon reader has just done that. As per the Amazon's Wireless Reading Device Review
Visual aids like lenses, spectacles, laser treatments and similar products form a huge industry in itself which is already helping majority of people affected by low vision.
In a November 2004 article called "magnitude and causes of visual impairment", the WHO estimated that in 2002 there were 161 million (about 2.6% of the world population) visually impaired people in the world, of whom 124 million (about 2%) had low vision and 37 million (about 0.6%) were blind. And the figures are escalating furthermore with the rising population.
Not hard to imagine why there has been such an increase in Large Print Book publications in last 39 years, which were first created as literally double-sized and double font sized books in 1969. Interestingly, one company successfully continuing the tradition is called Read How You Want which prints Large Print Books in custom fonts.
Amazon books store
Partially sighted or not, it doesn’t matter because what counts in the end, is that it eases away eye strain making reading as comfortable as possible. And it goes without saying how important it is for us to take care of our eye sight, especially when there isn’t a day when we can avoid reading something or getting to the computer screen for anything we want to do.
Kindle just bridged another gap in distribution of information. Even the conventional way of driving down to a store for your favorite book is over. Buying a Kindle, Amazon's gift to mankind is like giving our visions some reprise.
Filed Under: Amazon Kindle
