Unique Reading app for iPhone in need of some expert opinion

By Readtime, 12 April, 2013

Forum
iOS and iPadOS

 

Hi, We've just recently release version 2 of and app called Readtime and with it we've tried our best to add VoiceOver support. In a nutshell, Readtime helps you catch up on your reading list (in either Readability or Pocket). Once you've signed in, you set a duration and Readtime intelligently queues up just the right number of articles to fill the remaining time so that you can focus on reading. When you've finished reading an article, simply swipe to archive it and if there's enough time remaining, Readtime will serve up another. You can read more about it at our website or on the iTunes store. We're not in anyway experts on accessibility and we're wondering if anyone would be willing to try it out and provide some feedback? Here a few complimentary download links in case you would: Promo code 1Promo code 2Promo code 3 Thank you in advance for your consideration, Ben G, Simon, Jazz and Ben B 

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By DPinWI on Tuesday, April 23, 2013 - 11:39

Thank you for reaching out for comments and input. It's always great when developers include accessibility as part of the development process. When I first started the app, I wasn't sure what to do. I had a screen that had one line of text. It wasn't obious what to do mext. I tried swiping and touching various locations, and then tried to three finger swipe left to a new page. That worked! I continued through the 6 page intro to the main screen. I had no trouble with the time picker, or the short and all buttons. After double tapping the duration button, I was presented with an article. I started reading with a two finger swipe down. Worked fine. I did not keep an eye on the time. I do not know if the ten minute duration passed. I'll check that with the next article. I encountered my first issue at the end of the article. I heard options for sharing and printing the article, and then the reading continued by wrapping around and starting over at the beginning of the article. . I will try keeping track of the reading time. I'm not sure what is supposed to happen at the end of the reading timer, and I would like to find out. I will try exiting articles, and coming back to see if my place is preserved. Again, thank you for reaching out.

Wow, thank you so much for taking the time. Please don't hold back with your comments or suggestions on accessibility. The curse of knowledge and all, it's difficult to see what's not there even in non-accessible mode. Sounds like I'll need to look into preventing the page reading from looping back. I'll get onto that right away. Thanks, Simon

Thanks again for your feedback. I have some follow up: * Given the intro is very heavily biased towards the visual, could/should we improve the experience by speaking more text in lieu of the images? * I couldn't recreate the reading wrapping around. Is there some rotor setting that might cause this to happen? * Nothing specifically happens when the timer ends other than when you swipe the current article off, you end up on the main screen with the dial, etc. Would it be worth posting an audible notification that the time has expired again given that the progress indicator is entirely biased towards the visual. Thanks in advance, Simon

It only took a little standard first time running an app exploration for me to figure out I needed to change pages, but, a little indication of that might be nice for a new user. Perhaps a Voice Over hint could be provided. It's possible it's already in there, since I generally run with hints off, and might have missed it. I will do my best to recreate the reading wrap around and detail how it happens for me, including article read, device and app settings, and anything else I can think of. Since the app is based on the premise of timed reading, access to the countdown clock would be nice. However, I understand that the timer is more a case of knowing material is appropriate for the time to fill, than how long is left. I'm not sure how you calculate how much time a particular article will take to read, and how that translates to Voice Over reading given that people can adjust the speed.

> It only took a little standard first time running an app exploration for me to figure out I needed to change pages, but, a little indication of that might be nice for a new user. Perhaps a Voice Over hint could be provided. It's possible it's already in there, since I generally run with hints off, and might have missed it. There are definitely some hints and the introduction mentions it but nothing on the reading screen that would tell you what to do. I'll look into that. > I will do my best to recreate the reading wrap around and detail how it happens for me, including article read, device and app settings, and anything else I can think of. Thank you so much. > Since the app is based on the premise of timed reading, access to the countdown clock would be nice. I'm thinking we could add the time remaining as a hint on the progress timer so that if you tap it you'll hear "Cancel reading, button. 5 minutes remaining." or something like that? > However, I understand that the timer is more a case of knowing material is appropriate for the time to fill, than how long is left. I'm not sure how you calculate how much time a particular article will take to read, and how that translates to Voice Over reading given that people can adjust the speed. That's a very good point. It's based on the type of material you are reading and average reading speeds but that probably won't translate well into voiceover speeds. In the worst case your reading speed is likely to be faster so it will mostly just result in shorter articles than would be ideal. We could certainly presume a faster reading speed if voiceover is turned on. What do you think? Also I have some more promotional codes if anyone else is interested. You've been the most amazing help we've had. Thank you so much. Thanks, Simon

I haven't encountered the wrap around issue again. I'm not sure at this time if it was a quirk related to something I did, or a situation I've yet to replicate. I'm wondering if it had to do with the fact that I only had one article in my reading list. Since then, I've been working with more articles in the list. I'm not sure yet how to see and manage my article list in ReadTime. I'mnot not sure that when I've read something, it goes "away." I'm going to see if I can get a better handle on this during this morning's reading session. I'm going to have a think about the spoken timing on the progress bar. Your idea makes a lot of sense.

By DPinWI on Tuesday, April 23, 2013 - 11:39

I was able to recreate the wrap around, sort of. I was reading the only document in my queue. I wondered what would happen if while it was reading with VO, I locked the screen. Okay, I was pretty sure what would happen, but hey, I'km testing. Of course it stopped reading. When I unlocked the screen, I was at the top of the document. I did many 3 finger swipes to get to the place near the end where I had left off. I went too far. Instead of stopping at the bottom of the file as I expected, it wrapped back to the top and started scrolling through again I liked the little "congrats" screen. Nice touch! I still haven't figured out if I can see a list of documents currently waiting to be read. Is this possible to manage in the app? Thanks. .

By Readtime on Tuesday, April 23, 2013 - 11:39

Hi again, Thanks so much for doing some testing. I;ll have a look into the wrapping issue now. I have much more to go on. As for managing the articles, no there is now way. The philosophy of the app is that we deliberately take away the choice in order to focus your reading and not worry so much about management. Hope that makes sense, Simon

That approach totally makes sense, and I like it. I figured it may be a design choice, and it works for me. This is how I'm using the app. I tag articles on my PC, and then when I have a few minutes, open the app on my iPod Touch, and read them. The sync is fast and invisible to me. I do not enjoy web browsing on the iPod, and I don't like being tied to a computer to read longer articles. Despite the fact I'm not really using the timer function to its full potential, the app is great and is a nice solution. As I get more accustomed to reading this way, and have a larger list of items in my article queue, I think the timer will be more useful too.