[access-uk] Re: The Kindle

  • From: "Neil Jarvis" <neiljarvis@xxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2010 22:08:52 +1300

Mike,
You can't read a book like you would a Word document or an e-mail message or a web-page. You don't have true screen-reading capability here, just text-to-speech: so, for instance, checking the spelling of a word is not possible, neither is navigating around a text. It is possible to navigate when Text To Speech is turned off, but this apparently goes away when its turned on. You can pause and start the text though: yay!
Another thing which will annoy some people is that the feature which enables those books to "speak" has to be turned on each time you go into the book, regardless of how you left it. Its not a big hassle to do that, but its one more example of why this is to some people still work in progress, while to others its a huge step forward. Its not the finished article by any means, but its moved access to books and other digital content forward by leaps and bounds and I for one welcome that. I seem to remember having the same conversations about VoiceOver on the Mac a few years ago, so its not an unusual development story. 

I am eagerly looking forward to mine arriving on Friday.
----- Original Message ----- From: "Mike Moore" <mikeis@xxxxxxxxxxxx> 
To: <access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, September 29, 2010 8:25 AM
Subject: [access-uk] Re: The Kindle



Hi,
Can you re-read sections / words within the text or check spelling of words if using this for academic use? 

Mike
----- Original Message ----- From: "Steve Nutt" <steve@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> 
To: <access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, September 28, 2010 11:45 AM
Subject: [access-uk] Re: The Kindle



Hi Chris,
Yes, the Kindle does read the menus, but you have to have voice guidance set 
to full in settings.
What it doesn't read is the web browser, but that doesn't bother me so much. 

All the best

Steve

-----Original Message-----
From: access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of 
Christopher Maule-Oatway
Sent: Monday 27 September 2010 22:14
To: access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [access-uk] Re: The Kindle

Hello Sharon,

Today I had about ten minutes or so with a Kindle and can report the
following:

It seems that the menus do not speak, so blind users would have to
learn their way around the menu system.

Although publishers can block the speech reading of books, there are
many who make books available to speech readers.  Also, a lot of free
books can be downloaded from the Kindle site which are in the public domain. 

The voice that I heard is a clear American male voice.  I believe
that there is a female alternative, but apparently no UK English voice.

The joypad, or 5-way control, is a good size, but most of the keys
and buttons are small, though probably no smaller than those on
mobile phones with QWERTY keyboards.

The sighted reader has to press a button to 'Turn the page' of a
book, but reading by speech is continuous.

Books for the Kindle seem to be cheap, quite possibly cheaper than
their equivalent audio book or talking book versions.

I hope that these few comments are useful.

Cheers,

Christopher


At 21:08 27/09/2010 +0100, you wrote:

Oh Many thanks.

I did wonder if this may be the case, typical or what.

Sharon

From: access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of ari
Sent: 27 September 2010 20:25
To: access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [access-uk] Re: The Kindle

Hi Sharon
From what I've heard you can use the Kindle now, i.e navigating the
menues and things, but the problem is there is still the problem of
the books not being able to be read out because of the publisher
restrictions, so it is not really worth buying.



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