[Athen] FW: Introducing Free Kindle Software with Accessibility Features

[Ken Petri]

Hi Dan, Pratik and all,

I played with this yesterday for about an hour and will be doing more work
with it soon. I was using NVDA. Kindle for PC with Accessibility Plugin
works decently, but it has a number of quirks and impracticalities. I
imagine Amazon is well aware of them, but I'm going to write them and detail
the problems I found, anyway.

First, in reference Dan's email, you must type Ctrl + R to have a book read
aloud. Kindle will then read in a voice that is packaged with the Amazon
plugin, itself. You can switch between a male and female voice--it defaults
to the female--and easily speed up or slow down the reading (via Shift + +
or -). You can also browse by sentence with Ctrl + Shift + up or down arrow.

So, at least currently, you have no direct access to the text. The screen
reader (NVDA or JAWS) allows access to the menus, but the shipped TTS reads
the content, not your screen reader. You can read by sentence or
continuously. There does not seem to be any finer-grained navigation. For
instance, though you can get to a table of contents via the top level menu,
it's not possible to use it, because using the table of contents requires
clicking on a link in the table and this is not possible.

In fact, currently, it is not possible to get a cursor into the text of a
book, at all. This makes it impossible to select a portion of the text,
click a link, etc. You can, however, highlight all of the text on a page
(Ctrl + Shift + H). While this seems kind of silly, I believe they must have
done this in order to facilitate the creation of highlights that you can
then retrieve later via the notes and highlights panel. You can also set a
bookmark on a page. Where a bookmark contains only the location reference, a
highlight contains the location reference and the highlighted text. So,
theoretically, if not practically, you could skim through highlights and
hear snippets of each to help orient yourself without having to hit Ctrl + R
and read the page. In practice, though, I am having trouble understanding
why highlighting an entire page is at all desirable. More practical is the
Ctrl + Shift + N combination, which allows you to write a note for a page.
These notes appear in the notes and marks panel. Once written and saved,
though, you cannot edit or delete a note. You can set a bookmark from the
top level menu, but, again, I couldn't figure out a way to delete a bookmark
(or a highlight, for that manner).

I guess the take-away is the current Kindle for PC with Accessibility Plugin
provides access to a whole lot of books, and (we can hope) there will be
quick updates that make navigating, highlighting, and note-taking in these
books more practical.

Good first effort, Amazon. Keep up the good work!

ken
--
Ken Petri
Program Director, OSU Web Accessibility Center
102D Pomerene Hall, 1760 Neil Avenue, Columbus, Ohio  43210
Office: 614.292.1760 | Mobile: 614.218.1499 | Fax: 614.292.4190
http://wac.osu.edu | petri.1 at osu.edu



On Thu, Jan 20, 2011 at 3:58 AM, E.A. Draffan <ea at emptech.info> wrote:


> Many thanks Pratik for this one.  Sadly I have just had to write to Kindle

> to ask if there are any reasons why we may not download it from the UK!

> Probably something legal and very frustrating. This could help so many

> folk who find reading text and navigating around the Kindle difficult.

>

> Best wishes E.A.

>

> Mrs E.A. Draffan

> Learning Societies Lab,

> ECS, University of Southampton,

> Tel +44 (0)23 8059 7246

>

>

>

> > Colleagues,

> >

> > This is an extremely important first step toward full accessibility to

> > many books.  While I'd like to see Amazon provide ubiquitous access by

> > making their mobile devices and mobile software (along with the Mac

> > software) accessible, it gets blind or visually impaired people the

> > beginning of the dream of having the same access to electronic books as

> > their sighted peers.

> >

> >

> > -----Original Message-----

> > From: Amazon.com [mailto:store-news at amazon.com]

> > Sent: Wednesday, January 19, 2011 4:38 AM

> > To: pratikp1 at gmail.com

> > Subject: Introducing Free Kindle Software with Accessibility Features

> >

> > Dear blind-interest at amazon.com subscriber,

> >

> > Amazon.com is releasing a new version of Kindle for PC that adds

> > accessibility features designed for blind and low-vision customers.

> >

> > Kindle for PC with Accessibility Plugin is a free, downloadable

> > application for your Windows PC.  It provides the following accessibility

> > features: text-to-speech reading with adjustable voice settings,

> > voice-guided menu navigation, large font sizes, high contrast reading

> > mode, keyboard navigation, and accessible shortcuts.

> >

> > With this software, for the first time ever, the entire collection of

> > English language books in the Kindle Store can be read aloud.  With over

> > 750,000 English language titles, Amazon offers the largest selection of

> > accessible ebooks.  In order to use the text-to-speech feature, an

> > external screen reader program must be installed and running on the

> > Windows PC.

> >

> > The free download is available at:

> > http://www.amazon.com/kindle/accessibility

> >

> > We welcome your feedback at: kindle-PC-accessibility-feedback at amazon.com

> >

> > Sincerely,

> > The Kindle Team

> >

> > =====================================================================

> >

> > (c) 2011 Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

> >

> > Amazon, the Amazon a logo, the AmazonKindle logo, Kindle, and Whispersync

> > are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates.

> >

> > Amazon.com, 410 Terry Avenue, North, Seattle, WA 98109.

> > Reference: 18358260

> >

> > Please note that this message was sent to the following

> > e-mail address: pratikp1 at gmail.com

> >

> >

> >

> >

> > _______________________________________________

> > Athen mailing list

> > Athen at athenpro.org

> > http://athenpro.org/mailman/listinfo/athen_athenpro.org

> >

>

>

>

>

>

> _______________________________________________

> Athen mailing list

> Athen at athenpro.org

> http://athenpro.org/mailman/listinfo/athen_athenpro.org

>

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman12.u.washington.edu/pipermail/athen-list/attachments/20110120/009f510d/attachment.html>