Why did the US Government claim Kindle violates civil rights?

It already started a couple years ago.

http://www.businessinsurance.com/article/20100727/NEWS/10072...

Please note I'm not asking anyone to be less liberal or care less about the ADA; I'm simply observing this is a violation of the intent of the law and of common sense. The fault here is the government's, I'm not pinning this on liberalism in general.

This sort of thing is actually dangerous; it generates anti-ADA sentiment in the public at large. Which would be unfortunate, as the ADA is broadly a good idea. (There are corners I can quibble about, but that's because I'm the contentious sort. It's mostly good.)

Also, even as a little-l libertarian, I would observe that much of the reason the market was "solving" this before the government clumsily stepped in is that the market was well aware that this requirement was coming as a result of the already-existing ADA law. They probably just thought that maybe the government would let them run a test project before they tried to put it into production, at which point they would dot their is and cross their ts, something I find a rather reasonable assumption. Markets are very, very good at serving the majority, and they are very, very good at serving niches with resources proportional to the size of the niche, but if you want the entire market to serve a niche for social reasons you will need government intervention to do it.

During the first half of the article, for example, he notes that the Kindle programs did not violate the ADA because they did not force any student to use a Kindle, and allowed them access to alternative materials, including (presumably) more accessible media.

I'd hardly call that "libertarian bullshit". (Indeed, I suspect the author would be less offended by your characterization of his writing as "bullshit" so much as he would "libertarian": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byron_York)

My chief problem with the article has less to do with York's premise (which seems to be that this was an example of horrifically inane government overreach) and more with York's overt sensationalism-- he himself points out that Amazon has already produced a fully-accessible Kindle-- why then the breathless article? Isn't the overt stupidity of the CRD fairly moot at this point?

Moreover, who wants to read a textbook on a Kindle?

You are overly cynical. There is a group of developers sitting just a few feet from me whose whole job is making Google's products more accessible.

That said there are a lot of people at Google doing a lot of different things, and most don't think about accessibility until they have to. But, as a company, Google seems to take it seriously. And there is enough idealism built in to the culture that I don't think we need external people telling us we need to do it.

"[L]ast week [Amazon] announced a new generation of Kindles that are fully accessible to the blind. While the Justice Department was making demands, and Perez was making speeches, the market was working."

Agree 100%. My sister served for several years as the Disabilities Coordinator for Georgetown Law, and changed my viewpoint on the matter. I used to be of the 'let the market decide' school of thought, but I've come around. If public money is being spent, it can't be exclusive.

There's already a fair amount of regulation in place to ensure universal access. For instance, if you want to sell textbooks to most any university, you're required to provide a digital edition to any student who requests it.