2013Kindle Fire HD with speech
Narrator:
Welcome to this short demonstration of the screen reader features of the new Kindle Fire HD.
In a previous video we showed you how you could turn on the screen reader, either by going into the Settings and then the Accessibility menu, or by getting the power options screen up and holding two fingers down on the screen.
Once the screen reader is enabled, I can swipe ...
Screen reader:
Search button.
Narrator:
…to move around ...
Screen reader:
Shop button. Games button
Narrator:
…everything that's on the screen. Or I can put a finger on the screen and drag my finger around and I'll be told what I'm touching.
Screen reader:
Recommended free… the house on the cliff. On your device. Reading is 2% complete. Item 1 of 27.
Narrator:
Notice that not just the name of the book, but the fact that it is on my device, as opposed to being in the cloud, and the percentage of the book that has been read, which is shown on the cover of the book - these are also read out by the screen reader.
Once I've found the book that I want, I can just double tap anywhere on the screen to open it.
Screen reader:
Amazon Kindle. I sighed involuntarily as I watched them go. I hope they're all right.
Narrator:
Once the book opens, the screen reader starts reading it immediately from the top of the page that I'm on. I can just tap the screen once with one finger to pause it.
In order to restart the speech I need to swipe down or up to move my focus away from the book, and then swipe in the opposite direction to bring it back. So I'm going to try swiping down.
Screen reader:
5 minutes left in chapter. Tap to change further.
Narrator:
And the speech reads the information which is at the bottom of the screen. And then if I swipe back up ...
Screen reader:
I sighed involuntarily as I watched them go. I hope they're
Narrator:
... it starts rereading the book again.
As well as just being able to read the book from beginning to end like this, I can put my finger on the screen and actually find a specific area.
Screen reader:
Right, all, they're, hope, I, disappeared, around, the, corner, out, of
Narrator:
And this is one of the big changes that has happened in the Kindle, that you can actually read word by word now. As well as being able to play and pause the speech, it is also possible to use some of the standard Android gestures to read different areas of the screen. For instance I can do a down and then up gesture to change my granularity.
Screen reader:
Read by character. Read by word. Read by paragraph.
Narrator:
And by using these I can do things like spell out a word, for instance.
It's also possible to use the two-line gestures that Android has, for instance down and to the right, or up and to the right. In each case when you do this gesture you can then put your finger anywhere on the screen and move in a circle to go round some options. Let me demonstrate.
Screen reader:
Switched. Touch the screen and explore. Read all from next item. Read all from top. Repeat current item. I sighed involuntarily.
Narrator:
We don't have time to go through all of these gestures and demonstrate how they can be used, but hopefully you can see that the accessibility in the new Kindle Fire HD is greatly improved over previous versions.
Thank you very much.
This video demonstrated the new 2013 Kindle Fire HD running system version11.3.0.3.
Logo:
RNIB supporting blind and partially sighted people.
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