Blind and Visually Impaired Community
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I’m blind. Kindle text to speech has been a nightmare to master—here’s how to fix this (teleread.org)
submitted by fastfinge
Marconius 2 points 6y ago
Having recently used a Kindle fire tablet in a research study, there is an even easier process to managing the text to speech. This process involves entirely ignoring the Kindle tablet and not using it at all. And here I thought Google was bad, Amazon just ranks the worst out of all tech companies attempting to add accessibility into their devices. It all just seems so bare bones with no actual outreach to disability organizations on how to appropriately proceed with making things more accessible. Ugh.
fastfinge [OP] 1 points 6y ago
I actually don't find the Kindle Fire all that bad. However, I already know how to use IOS and Android screen-readers. So when I pulled the kindle out of the box, I already had a vague idea what to do. I even find that Amazon's VoiceView works slightly better than Google's Talkback. However, Amazon offers no tutorials or documentation. So if you don't already know what you're doing, thanks to extensive experience on other platforms, you're screwed. So you might as well just stick to VoiceOver or Talkback, if you already have that.
-shacklebolt- 1 points 6y ago
The thing that killed VoiceView on the Fire for me was the apparent lack of ability to use TTS engines other than the one included (you can install them, but there's no way to enable them in the menus.) I use [Eloquence]
(https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=es.codefactory.eloquencetts&hl=en) on all of my other Android devices for the high intelligibility at high speeds, so I installed cyanogen mod on my Kindle instead. Much better.
(https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=es.codefactory.eloquencetts&hl=en) on all of my other Android devices for the high intelligibility at high speeds, so I installed cyanogen mod on my Kindle instead. Much better.
fastfinge [OP] 1 points 6y ago
I've heard from multiple people that Eloquence on android requires you to have an always on internet connection, because of the DRM they used. From what I've heard, it just stops working a few minutes after the android device goes offline. That makes it a total non-starter for me! The point of the Kindle is to have a reading device that works without data. Kind of a much cheaper Victor Reader replacement, is how I use it.
-shacklebolt- 2 points 6y ago
What?
I'm running KitKat on my (somewhat older) phone with an up to date version of Eloquence from the link provided above.
I've never had this happen on road trips, airplane rides, and other times I've been offline. I wondered if maybe a very recent update might be the culprit though, so I put my phone offline (mobile data off, wifi off) for the past 6 hours and have been playing the same book (through moon+ reader) that entire time. Then I switched back to using Talkback in general offline for the past 15 minutes. No issues. I am unable to replicate the problem.
While I'm sure the app does have a drm check, I can only assume that it is less frequent than every 6 hours on my devices. Maybe it is different on newer Android devices? Or maybe there is an issue with a newer Android version?
I'm running KitKat on my (somewhat older) phone with an up to date version of Eloquence from the link provided above.
I've never had this happen on road trips, airplane rides, and other times I've been offline. I wondered if maybe a very recent update might be the culprit though, so I put my phone offline (mobile data off, wifi off) for the past 6 hours and have been playing the same book (through moon+ reader) that entire time. Then I switched back to using Talkback in general offline for the past 15 minutes. No issues. I am unable to replicate the problem.
While I'm sure the app does have a drm check, I can only assume that it is less frequent than every 6 hours on my devices. Maybe it is different on newer Android devices? Or maybe there is an issue with a newer Android version?
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