Many of you have come to us at INDATA and said “I’ve heard that the new Kindle has text-to-speech options. Can you tell me more about this?” INDATA decided to purchase the new Kindle for our loan library to see what it has to offer to folks with vision impairments that are interested in listening to their books on the Kindle device. While researching this topic, I spoke with Ricky Enger, a staff member from Serotalk, who referred me to a post she had written about the topic. We’ve taken bits and pieces of her article and brought it to you here, and we’ve added information in our post about screen magnification options. For a detailed accessibility review, please read her article “An Accessibility Review of the Amazon Kindle 3.”
The accessibility on the Kindle consists of two features: “voice guide” and “text-to-speech.”
“Voice Guide:”
- The “voice guide” feature is what you will use to navigate menus and materials on the device, and there is currently no way to enable this feature without sighted help.
- To enable “voice guide”, press the menu button which is just above the 5-way navigation control, choose settings, and turn on “voice guide”. Once this feature is on, it will remain activated even when you restart your Kindle.
- When reading books, “voice guide” will announce the number of pages present on the home screen, as well as the page you’re currently on. When a book is open, you’ll hear its title as well as a percentage indicator of where you are in the book. In order to begin reading the book though, you’ll need to enable text-to-speech.
“Text-to-Speech:”
- Reads text content aloud using the Samantha or Tom voice from Nuance
- The text-to-speech settings on the device allow you to switch between male and female voices, and you can also choose from 3 speed settings: slower, default, and faster.
- Text-to-speech preferences for any content you read are not saved, meaning that you will need to enable text to speech for each bit of content you open, each time you open it.
Serotalk notes that at this time, navigation within a text is not possible. This means that although you can read a book on the device, it is not ideal for materials such as textbooks, Bibles, or even the Kindle user’s guide, where you may want to jump to specific portions of the text rather than reading it straight through.
Audiobooks:
- The Kindle supports reading of Audible content which can be purchased directly from the Kindle store and downloaded over wifi, or transferred from the PC when the Kindle is connected via USB.
Screen Magnification:
- Eight different font sizes are available
- You can change the line spacing and words per line allowing for added customization
- The screen can be rotated to landscape form
helpful. i am interested in this for my son who is has reading problems. He will not be using this for textbooks, but will be using the kindle for other school books. i am interested in trying one. i will try to go to Best Buy today.
thanks
Steven
I have q question concerning voice guide. I understand it remains n even when the unit is turned off, but does that allow navigation of the menus for those of us who are blind once we turn the machine on again? I ask this because someone I know has a Kindle. When the unit was turned off then on again, voice guide remained on but there was no spoken voice. Any ideas about this?
Thanks
Thanks for your question, Elizabeth. My associate Carol has come up with an answer that I hope you will find helpful:
“Voice programs do not work the same on different devices. It is like driving a Ford or a Chevy. They are both cars and drive differently. Dragon naturally Speaking has a setting that turns on when the computer comes on. The Kindle may have that setting or may not. That would be an excellent suggestion to send to Kindle manufacturers. A blind person can use a screen reader and Dragon using a 3rd program named J-Say. Basically when the person is using dragon to type, this program doesn’t listen to the screen reader and insert text.”-Carol Girt