One In Five for Sunday 5 April 2009

This week, the U S based Authors Guild plays hardball with Amazon's latest text to speech offering. Executive Director Paul Aiken and president Roy Blount Jr have slammed Amazon's new wireless reading device - Kindle2. Because text to speech capability promises the near instant reading aloud of books on line, it could be a boon for blind people. Or is the Kindle Swindle - as it's been dubbed by its critics - breaching authors' copyright? We'll follow up on that controversy later. Right now though, we're in amongst some of the international artists who fronted up to a one day symposium on disability and the creative arts - a cut down version of what'd been planned as a week long event in Auckland. February's Momentum 09 festival had to be scaled right back to a one day affair thanks to the economic downturn - and that to accommodate those artists who couldn't cancel their travel plans. But disability arts was the winner on the day.