[blind-philly-comp] Fw: Introducing new accessibility features on Kindle and Fire
- From: <ecollege1@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <"Undisclosed-Recipient:;"@freelists.org>
- Date: Wed, 10 Jan 2018 11:42:07 -0500
From: george.holliday
Sent: Wednesday, January 10, 2018 10:36 AM
To: George S. Holliday
Subject: Introducing new accessibility features on Kindle and Fire
Introducing new accessibility features on Kindle and Fire
Article Link:
https://blog.aboutamazon.com/introducing-new-accessibility-features-on-kindle-and-fire
We have been making steady improvements to the accessiblility of our Kindle
e-books and the Kindle reading experience. Earlier this year we added support
for ALT text for images to Kindle e-books, which we made available to blind and
low vision customers on Kindle for PC and on Fire OS with VoiceView. Today we
are delighted to announce support for accessible math equations.
Customers can use the 2017.4 release of the popular open source NVDA screen
reader to read math equations in Kindle e-books. NVDA is able to parse
equations encoded in MathML, allowing customers to navigate within those math
equations as well as review them via Nemeth math codes on a connected braille
display. Publisher provided ALT text for math equations is also supported, and
is available to blind and low vision customers using NVDA, as well as via the
VoiceView screen reader on Fire Tablets. Already hundreds of Kindle e-Books are
available with accessible math equations.
In the past few months we’ve also added a number of text rendering features to
Kindle book reading across many of our reading surfaces. On Kindle e-Readers,
iOS, Fire OS, Android, and PC customers can choose the OpenDyslexic font,
adjust page margins, adjust line spacing, and select right ragged text
rendering. On the all-new Kindle Oasis, as well as current releases of Kindle
reader on iOS, FireOS, and Android, customers can choose from a number of font
boldness options, incresing the weight of any font used within the Kindle
e-book. Also available on the all-new Kindle Oasis is a Large Display option to
increase the size of the user interface on several key screens, and Invert
Black and White for customers who prefer white text and graphics on a black
backround. Invert Black and White applies to the entire user interface as well
as e-book content. See the full list of Kindle accessiblity features on our
Kindle Accessibility page.
Additionally, we have updated the gesture language for our VoiceView customers
on Fire Tablets, introducing a host of new features, paired with new and
improved gestures for using them. VoiceView customers have consistently asked
us to go beyond the stock Android screen reader gestures, and now all existing
VoiceView customers on our 4th, 5th, 6th, and 7thgeneration Tablets are
receiving a free, over-the-air update to Fire OS 5.6.0, which includes the new
VoiceView gestures. The new gestures/features include the Stop Speech command
(two-finger single-tap), Turn Screen Curtain On/Off(three-finger triple-tap)
and the new Learn Mode for gesture practice (four-finger double-tap). These are
all described on our CS help page “Guide to VoiceView Screen Reader for Fire
Tablet”.
It remains Day 1 for accessibility at Amazon and we will continue to refine
these experiences for all customers across our product lineup. Let us know how
you are using Kindle e-Books at
mailto:kindle-PC-accessibility-feedback@xxxxxxxxxx, and how you are using the ;
VoiceView screen reader at device-accessibility@xxxxxxxxxx; we’d love to hear
from you.
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Other related posts:
- » [blind-philly-comp] Fw: Introducing new accessibility features on Kindle and Fire - ecollege1
- » [blind-philly-comp] Re: Fw: Introducing new accessibility features on Kindle and Fire- David Goldfield
