Kindle keyboard G3

I purchased an Amazon Kindle Keyboard soon after it was released, solely, to experiment with and learn about  the TTS options for dyslexic pupils in our school.  However, the keyboard does make the Kindle bigger and it is definitely not the most user friendly keyboard I have been working with.

The two voices on the Kindle Keyboard are pretty robotic, although the female voice is marginally better.  The voices can be activated by pressing “Aa” key and then activating the text-to-speech option. By pressing enter, the book is being read out. If you would like to change the speed and voice, press the “Aa” again and then option of changing the voice and reading speed appear.   I have chosen the faster option as, previously,  mention that I find listening to slower reading speeds quite distractive.  However, listening to a book with the faster-female voice setting, I found it difficult to actually hear the words clearly.  Additionally, the words are not highlighted while being read out.  As Jamie Munro highlighted this as a major drawback.  If this bimodal reading mode was available, it could increase comprehension by 20%.  Would it not be nice to be able to export Kindle books to another book reader that has better accessibility features?

I have tried Calibre to convert my Kindle books into epubs but with little success.  I have now discovered that there is DMR removal tools but I need to explore the legality of this a little further.

One of the features of the Kindle that I really like is the ability to bookmark sections and export these via http://clippingsconverter.com.  I have tried this and it works really well and it can be integrated into Evernote of which I am a huge fun.  Apparently, you should be able to access your notes via the Amazon websites, but unfortunately I have not been able to do so.

Kindle fire HD

This review was written by Jim Nuttall, a Qiat list member with his own blog, (http://jamesnuttall.blogspot.com/).

I am exploring the Amazon Kindle fire HD 8.9 inch tablet as I am interested in the Kindle Fire since Amazon Kindle store has many books that are unavailable from other sources.  The Amazon Kindle store also has many books for children at all levels. The Amazon Kindle fire HD will mostly be appropriate, I believe, for supplementary reading and not as a full pledge intervention device. So I have contacted Amazon Health and they sent me a list of features for the Amazon Kindle fire HD 8.9 inch tablet.

Kindle Fire HD 8.9” has the following accessibility features:

• Voice Guide reads your screen actions aloud to assist with navigation.
• Explore  by Touch enables special gestures you can use to navigate your Kindle Fire.

These features are exclusive to the Kindle Fire HD 8.9” model, and are currently not available on other Kindle Fire devices.

To turn on accessibility features:

1.   Swipe down from the top of the screen and tap More.
2.   Under Settings, tap Accessibility.
3.   Next to Voice Guide, tap On.
4.   If you want to turn on Explore by Touch, tap On.

From this screen, you can also choose to lock the screen rotation to make using accessibility features easier. Kindle Fire HD also features Text-to-Speech for reading books aloud.

With Explore by Touch, you can use special gestures to navigate your Kindle Fire:

• Unlock your Kindle: With two fingers, swipe from right to left near the bottom of the screen.
• Open the Quick Settings menu at the top of the screen: With two fingers, swipe down from the top of the screen.
• Scroll through items in the carousel and content libraries on the Home screen: With two fingers, swipe to the left or right
• Turn pages in a book: With two fingers, swipe to the left or right
• Download or open an item: Double-tap
• Make menu selections onscreen: Double-tap

Accessibility features are supported for navigation and for reading books only.

Voice Reader

After having started exploring this app, I had to be reminded how important structured documents are as I imported a lengthy pdf on visual stress which was not structured.  This meant I could not quickly get a feel for the document and the various sections within it as it is over 100 pages long.  If you have ever doubted the importance of structured documents, an experience like this will absolutely convince you.

I accessed the Gutenberg project and selected a German book so that I am able to test the German voices within Dream Voice and the German Ivona voices that I have downloaded for a trial.  The German Voice Andreas, an Acapela voice, which sounds Southern German, and therefore is very pleasing to my ears.  This aside however, I was so by impressed the Gutenberg Project that the book I had chosen could be obtained via Dropbox.  How good this! Additionally,  I am really enjoying listening to Andreas reading German.

Most importantly, bimodal reading is possible within this App.