Using IPad VoiceOver to read out your books in IBook
The IPad is a great device and there are many things you can do with it. I was not that sure that apple was onto such a game changer other than for ebook reading, but the iPad has definitely opened up the tablet Market. Hell, pundits are even calling 2011 “the year of the tablet” due to the shear number of competitor tablets being announced!
But I still find most of my use to be for ebook reading using the great iBook app by apple.
Yesterday I noticed another great feature of the ibook app: “audio book style reading of any book”.
Now, if you are partially sited or even completely blind you may have heard about the apple feature called ‘voiceover’ which allows users of iPhone or iPad to hear the names of the buttons as they drag their fingers over any apps buttons, lists or other user interface controls.
Well, with a little setup, this feature can be easily turned on to allow the text on each page of your ebooks to be read out to you.
Why would you want this? Well say you have had a long day at work and you are tired, then it is sometimes nice to relax your eyes,but still enjoy your current book.
Now, you probably don’t want to be hearing the voice announcements for every user interface control on every app,so I have found a nice little trick to make it very easy to turn on and off voice over just when I need it (i.e. Just when in ibook):
Pre-setup:
- go into the settings app and tap on the general list item, then accessibility.
- tap on the ‘triple click home button’ option and select ‘VoiceOver’
Now you can turn on/off VoiceOver at any time by pressing the home button three times in quick succession.
Using the VoiceOver ‘lady’ to listen to books:
Now, to use iBooks when VoiceOver is on, you need to know a few extra touch gestures:
1. When VoiceOver is on single taps will cause the system to say the button or word you tap on. Double tap will usually press or take an action associated with it (eg pressing a button, changing setting etc etc).
2. When in iBook and showing pages of a book, you can tap on the first line on the page and then do a two fingered swipe downwards to ask VoiceOver to start reading the book text.
By two finger swipe I mean placing two of your fingers on the screen at once and then dragging them across the screen in unison.
Once the ipad is reading in this mode, if left it will continue reading, even turning pages for you.
3. You can pause the reading by two finger tapping. Or restart the reading by two finger tapping again.
4. At any time you can move to the next page by three finger swiping from right to left. Or move to the previous page by three finger swiping from left to right.
I have found that although the voice quality of VoiceOver is not as good as the mac os x voices, you do get used to listening to ‘the lady in that ipad’ ;-)
Ps I have messed around with the VoiceOver language settings some more and it’s interesting to hear the differences in pronunciation when choosing different languages in the VoiceOver section of accessibility section. My favourite is ‘australian english’!
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Feb12
