Hi David
Regarding Kindle for Android, I've just started using it and I am not
clear about how I start reading a book once I have downloaded it. The
phone tells me to double tap for continuous reading, but nothing starts.
I got it to read the dedication on the first page of the book, but it
just read the same page over and over again. A quick guide of how to get
started would be great.
Well done for providing such a practical review of the phone and apps,
thanks.
Andrew
On 10/10/2016 09:12, David Griffith wrote:
Wileyfox Swift Accessibility Bundle Part 2 This is the second part
of my review of this device. If these are not useful let me know.
The first part on purchasing and setup was posted yesterday.
I am currently using the Swift as a replacement for my Nexus 7 tablet
and as such am concentrating on its potential as a Media Playing
Device. In other words using it as if if was a Victor Reader Stream or
Plextalk Pocket etc. I have not used it as a phone yet and only really
anticipate it as the moment as a backup phone.
This second part is largely concerned with assessing the device as a
unit suitable for blind users with hearing impairment.
My hearing loss is evaluated as being in the severe range by my
Audiology service. I have tried listening to the device without
wearing hearing aids and with. Although the phone has a suitably
loud speaker I have concentrated here on its use with earphones.
The sound quality and volume levels ovviously vary with earphones and
for the weekend I I have been using the JVC Folding over ear earphones
currently available from Sainsburys on their online Grocery Store for
about £13. These are nice padded comfortable earphones which provide
acceptable quality for my ears and excellent volume output.
I will feed back on System TTS, Google Music, the Audible App, Kindle
Reading app, and the VoiceDream Reader app for this review. I am aware
that there are other media options which I will come to in due course
possibly in future posts.
System TTS.
The Swift comes with a high quality Google TTS Voice which is
responsive and has a good volume when set to maximum. I was able to
hear the output clearly both whilst wearing hearing aids and with the
headphones sitting over my ears without hearing aids. This is the
experience I normally prefer as I have never found a hearing aid which
will transmit sound quality as well as a loud device set at a high
volume. Sending the sound through the intermediary my various NHS
hearing aids over the years always causes a deterioration in sound
quality.
I installed my copy of Eloquence and set this as the system voice.
Whilst the sound volume was acceptable I found, to my surprise, that
the inbuilt TTS voice was significantly louder, and importantly
seemed more responsive. So by the end of the weekend I had switched
back to the default Google Voice. I am still an Eloquence fan and am
glad I have the option of the voice on the device but I will stick
with Google for now.
Kindle Reading App
The Kindle Reading app installed fine and my Kindle books were
instantly available. A very big part of why I want an Android Device
is the ability to use Kindle with the Eloquence voices. As far as I am
aware this is the only platform on which this is legally available. It
is just my preference but for long book reading, and certainly for
study Eloquence is the clearest voice for rapid reading of books. In
essence I think the Swift is probably worth the purchase money alone
if all it offers is the ability to read consistently with this Kindle
setup. A big plus.
The main downside is that it does not appear, at the moment possible
to read Kindle books with the screen locked. I would be interested if
anybody has got around this. For the time being then reading Kindle
books is an armchair experience which I guess puts us on a level
playing field with sighted readers. To avoid the locked screen problem
I set my sleep time in Android Settings to the maximum 30 minutes.
The volume levels were acceptable and comprehensible for me both
wearing hearing aids and useing earphones without hearing aids.
Audible App
This was the big disappointment of the weekend. For some reason the
Audible Book I downloaded was very quiet and was definately the
quietest example I found of media played on the device. It was
significantly quieter than the book I heard on my iPhone last week. I
might have just been unlucky with the book production and for a fair
comparison I need to load this same book as well into my iPhone. You
would definately need to have earphones placed over hearing aids to
get an acceptable volume out of this app. I have not tried a loop
headset, however I do not normally like using these for mobile
listening around the house as I find that using a loop really does cut
out all the ambient sound in the house and you will have no chance of
hearing door bells / telephones etc.
Google Music
I only tried this briefly but the volume level returned as normal for
the playback of music and seemd fine with both earphones and hearing
aids.
Voicedream Reader.
This is certainly not as slick as it's iOS manifestation but I still
managed to get the player up and running. Annoyingly the app crashed
the phone when I was trying to download an additional voice from the
Google Play Store and this voice now refuses to work.
Despite that, once you get used to it the app performed well for me
over the weekend. There are a few things you will need to learn about
using Reader. The first and most important is that it is hopeless, I
found trying to import books into the app using the app import
function. Basically you need to work outside of the app. I found both
ebooks and a zipped audio book in the DropBox app, double tapped on
those and Reader immediately appeared as an option to open with. Using
this method importing books into Voicedream was straightforward.
The other thing to customise with Voicedream Reader is voices. You
have the option of using on start up one of the high quality Acapella
voices. Scottish Rhona or Graham are the options offered to me. You
are not restricted to this single voice though. You can use the
Manage voices and Add Voice setting to import the surprisingly large
number of additional TTS voices available on the Swift. Any voice
installed on your device will be available. Not only was I able to
import 2 of the Eloquence Voices, which as I say is important for me,
but I was also able to import several Google TTS voices which are of
high quality.
The main drawback of using system TTS as opposed to the voices you
buy as in app purchases is that apparently the highlighted tracking of
words is not available for those with low vision. However as I am
blind this does not personally affect me.
The other big plus of the VoiceDream Reader is that both ebooks and
audio books play perfectly acceptably in locked screen mode so that
you can happily continue to listen whilst you are doing the housework.
As far as volume is concerned Voicedream delivered TTS at system
levels so was fine for my listening purposes. The audio book was at
least 50% louder than the maximum volume available through the
audible app. Of course you can also use PC utilities like mp3gain to
bgoost the volume of your audio books before you even import them into
Voicedream.
So in summary for this part of the review, with the exception of the
Audible app the device performed well in delivering acceptable
output. The ebook reading was louder than that available, for
example, with the victor Reader Stream.
Using Google Now I was able to launch each reading app just by using
Voice command. Controlling the players through the lock screen seems
more of a challenge and I probably need to learn some techniques to
achieve this. At the moment I am having to unlock the device and find
the pause button which is a little clunky.
Still if you want an Eloquence eBook reading device a setup similar to
this is probably the only game in town.
David Griffith
vlo
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