Nook HD+ low vision
Narrator:
Welcome to this short video introducing some of the features of the Nook HD+ tablet using it as an eReader for a low vision reader.
The first thing to say about most tablets is that you can have them in portrait or in landscape mode. This is a personal choice, but you can lock the rotation from the Settings menu. We’ve got it landscape mode primarily because it fits our filming equipment better but you can choose which way you have it.
The Nook HD+ is based on Android as the operating system so that you have access to things like the Play Store, and this means you can load all kinds of apps including many eBook reading apps such as Kobo and the Kindle.
The Nook HD+ doesn’t have the accessibility features that are incorporated in the latest versions of Android, so for instance, there’s no magnification which Android has system-wide now. And although text-to-speech is mentioned in the Settings, there isn’t any way (that I’ve found anyway) that you can turn it on or off. So we’re going to be concentrating on the visual aspects of using the Nook HD+ as an eReader.
The way that you open a book: there is a library app onscreen and when you tap that you get the books and magazines and films that you’ve previously purchased. And if I tap one of those books it will open up into something called the reader app.
It comes up at a particular font size and shape and if I’m not happy with that I can tap the middle of the screen and a menu appears near the bottom. One of the buttons on the menu is an AA button which is pretty well now the standard way of suggesting that there are font options to make. If I tap that button, the first thing to say is there’s a Publisher Default button at the bottom right – if that is turned on than none of the other features for changing the way that the text looks are available. So if that’s on, the first thing you might want to do is turn it off, and then all the other features that are available on the screen are available to you.
Along the top there’s a series of letter As. The one in the middle, near the middle, is a slightly different colour which shows that that’s the one that’s currently in use. So for instance if I wanted large text I could tap on the A at the far right and you might have been able to see that the text size changed behind the font screen that I have up.
Another setting that some people might like is if you have a preference for a particular font or a particular font shape. Some people like for instance serif fonts, other people like sans serif fonts, and you can choose from a number of different fonts there to make the text a bit more legible.
I’ll just come off that font setting now so that you can see the way that the book has changed behind that font Settings option. So, I can now scroll through the book in the usual way and read it at the font size of my choice.
There are a couple of other settings which you might want to change. The main one of these is the “Theme” setting at the bottom right. There are six of these. Four of them show you a different colour background and this could be useful if you have an issue with glare. Many of these tablets have quite shiny screens and glare can be an issue. So you can change the background colour or you can choose one of the two settings that actually gives you white text on a dark background. The one I’ve got now is dark gray and there doesn’t seem to be a way to get it to being actually black. I know some people would like a very black screen with white text. Essentially we have a choice between brown and dark gray.
Two other minor changes that you might want to consider are “Line Spacing” and “Margins”. You can scrunch the text up a little bit or you can make the gap between the different lines larger. And in the same way you can choose to have larger or smaller margins. And each of these, it’s a trade-off between how much text you get on the screen and how easy you find it to read.
One last setting that it might be worth showing is not actually found inside the reader app. If I come out of the reader app by pressing the N button – it’s the only physical button on the front of the Nook HD+ - I can turn on a voice setting by going to the main settings, all settings and then with “Applications” chosen at the left I can tap on the “Reader” application and there is an option here called “enable accessibility - currently in BETA”. Beta basically means that is unfinished and we’re going to see what effect that has in a moment when we go into a book.
Now when I go back into my book through the library I should find that as I open it my current location is spoken.
Reader:
Page eighty four of nine hundred forty four
Narrator:
The volume isn’t as loud as it could be but there is a headphone socket on the machine so you could put a pair of headphones or maybe even an external set of speakers on here if you wished to.
If I now tap the middle of the screen the voice will read what’s on the screen and the current sentence is highlighted. Because I have large font at the moment there is less than one sentence on the screen. So let’s see how it goes.
Reader:
Entering auto mode. tering the neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, but he’s considered as the rightful someone or other of their daughters. my dear mister
Narrator:
I can tap the screen again to pause the speech. The screen flips to show the text that’s being read, but because a whole sentence is highlighted at any one time, it only changes when the highlight changes. And so again you might have noticed that when it was reading the first sentence, it read quite a lot of the text that was on this screen before it actually flipped to this screen.
With the speech turned on I can tap and hold the middle of the screen...
Reader:
Entering manual mode. Menudible of contents
Narrator:
... And it brings up a little menu. It doesn’t read it very well - what it said then was “entering menu table of contents.” I can now flick up and down the screen to move through this menu.
Reader:
Menu go to bookmarks. Menu speech rate.
Narrator:
And on one of these, for instance “menu speech rate” I can double tap to start making a change to the rate of the speech.
Reader:
Fling up and down to select a value.
Narrator:
What it said then was “fling up or down to select the value”. These are things that I call swipes, some people call them flicks, but Nook’s decided to call them flings. But as I swipe up the screen the speed of the voice will change.
Reader:
Speech rate changed.
Narrator:
In most cases where you have a voice like this, it would give you some value. It might have said “speech rate 10” or 12. This doesn’t but you might be able to hear if I swipe up a few times that it is actually getting a little bit faster.
Reader:
Speech rate, Speech rate, Speech rate changed
Narrator:
I’ll just tap the screen once more and it’ll start reading.
Reader:
Entering auto mode. Bennett” said his lady to him one day “have you heard that Netherfield Park is let at last
Narrator:
This speech now should be available for any book that’s opened, as well as the font and size settings which I’ve chosen should be available for any other book that I open.
It is notable that many books that you can get on the Nook HD+ don’t actually work with speech. Annoyingly, the Nook HD+ manual - the quick user guide and the user guide - neither of these work with the speech. And a couple of other books that I’ve tried, when I try turning on the speech, they just give a “click” sound and the book closes. This shows the limitations of the voice; I don’t think this is designed for someone who can’t see the screen, but it might be useful for someone who wants a bit of assistance with using the screen, and we can only hope that in later versions of the Nook HD+, these kinds of limitations are overcome.
I hope you found this very short introduction to the Nook HD+ as a eBook reader useful.
This video featured the Nook HD+ tablet as an eReader using software version 2.1.0
Logo:
RNIB supporting blind and partially sighted people
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