[Athen] Disappointed with Kindle app for student needs

[Deborah Armstrong]

I'm a big Kindle fan but I mostly read for fun. When I do read for classes it was typically history or literature, books that had to be read chronologically.

Yesterday Freedom scientific did a training on the Kindle app for the PC. I was really hoping to learn something new, but I didn't.

For people just getting started, it shows how to navigate the library, find a specific book and filter for only those downloaded to the PC.

Freedom scientific's trainer showed how to move by line character and word, plus how to set and retrieve a bookmark.

For searching they showed how to locate a particular "page" or a phrase within the book. Also they showed how to locate a specific book in the library.

Note that all these keystrokes also work with NVDA.

This took them literally only ten minutes because it's a few simple keystrokes - but that's it!

Pages in Kindle books have nothing to do with the printed pages in the hardcover or softcover equivalent. Chapters and subsections don't always start at a page boundary. The say all (read from the cursor until I tell you to stop) doesn't work on my app and I noticed it wasn't mentioned in the training!

So though this fluffy overview is a really nice start, the app isn't going to be robust enough for anyone who needs to use a screen reader or magnification to locate sections in a book. And I have no idea if other apps like k3000 can work with this app but I suspect they cannot.

I was optimistically hoping that any issues I had with the app were caused by my own ignorance. Looks like they were not!

As much as I love using my Kindle and related apps for recreational reading, I find it super frustrating that there aren't more navigation possibilities.

For your beginners, the training is archived here:
                https://www.freedomscientific.com/webinars/connect-and-learn-accessing-the-kindle-app-for-pc-with-jaws/

--Debee



-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman12.u.washington.edu/pipermail/athen-list/attachments/20200410/b824631a/attachment.html>