![]() ![]() Note that you can always push the home button from anywhere to take you to this screen. ![]() To read a book on the Kindle, use the 5-way navigation controller to move through the content displayed on your kindle’s home screen. However, this is not a function of the device, but rather the text-to-speech engine itself. We found that the default speed sounded most natural for reading, and though the “faster” setting did give us the speed we were hoping for, the speech sounded choppy and uncomfortable to listen to. ![]() 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. The Kindle’s text-to-speech feature is used to read text content aloud using the Samantha or Tom voice from Nuance. These include, but are not limited to, books, newspapers and magazines, blogs, and Audible content. Navigating and Reading ContentĪs mentioned above, there are several types of content which can be read with the Kindle. If you purchase content with the text-to-speech option disabled by request of the publisher, you’ll be unable to read it accessibly on your device. The description indicates whether the content you’ve selected allows the use of text-to-speech or not. When searching for text content in the Kindle store, you’ll want to be sure and read the description of the content you hope to purchase. You’ll need to purchase any items you’d like to read using your computer, and those items will then be delivered wirelessly to your Kindle. Neither the Kindle Store nor the web browser on the device is accessible. Unfortunately, only one of these methods is accessible for blind users at this time. Users can shop in the Kindle store from their computer, or directly from the device itself. When you’d like to purchase new content, there are two ways for Kindle users to do this. The Kindle appears as a removable drive in Windows Explorer, allowing you to copy content from your computer. You can transfer your personal documents, as well as Audible content and MP3 music to your device directly from your computer. There are thousands of text and audio books, periodicals and blogs which can be read with your Kindle. Other keyboard shortcuts already exist for doing things like adding bookmarks, posting to social networks and so on, and this could easily be added in a firmware update. This could easily be done by assigning a keyboard shortcut, allowing it to be toggled at will. While we’re glad to see this feature included, we’d like to see a way for a blind person to turn it on independently. Once this feature is on, it will remain activated even when you restart your Kindle. To enable “voice guide”, press the menu button which is just above the 5-way navigation control, choose settings, and turn on “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. The accessibility on the Kindle consists of two features: “voice guide” and text-to-speech”. However, it will not talk when you first turn it on. If you’ve purchased your Kindle using your Amazon account, the unit will come already registered to you, and the name on your Amazon account will be displayed on the screen. While we will give general descriptions of how to use the Kindle in this document, we strongly recommend that you read the User’s Guide if you’d like more in-depth instructions. In addition, with this post we aim to give feedback to the Amazon developers for creating an even better and more accessible Kindle user experience. In this review, we will do our best to provide an accurate picture of what blind users can expect when using the Kindle 3. We noticed no appreciable difference between the two firmware versions in terms of accessibility improvements. ![]() The unit we chose had both wifi and 3G, and during our testing we used version 3.01 of the Kindle firmware and, a bit later, version 3.02. As soon as the unit was available, we purchased one from Amazon and began the process of testing it in-house. The Serotalk team was quite excited to read that Amazon would be releasing the third generation of its popular Kindle EReader, and this time the device would boast several accessibility enhancements. An Accessibility Review of the Amazon Kindle 3 ![]()
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