Hi,
The one time I tried to read a book myself using a Braille Display in Apple Books on iPad, the experience was incredibly bad. Parts of sentences were cut off, complete pages were skipped and so on.
As English is not my mother tongue and I want to improve my language skills, I want to read more English books. I want to read them myself so I can look up words or terms in a dictionary while reading. Therefore, audio books are not an option for me at the moment.
that brings me to my question: How is the current experience with Apple Books on iPad?
If the iPad experience is still odd, is it better on macOS?
Thanks in advance.
Manuel
Comments
It depends on the the book.
I use the “Accessibility Reader” to help me concentrate.
It really depends on the book file you’re reading.
Some books work great, while others don’t. I haven’t been able to pinpoint a pattern. Usually, it reads through several pages and then stops at the bottom of a page. You’ll need to swipe manually to the next page and then tell the Reader to keep going.
EPUB books tend to read better than PDFs. The issue with PDFs is that if a page has lots of sidebar-like text blocks, the order in which the text is read isn’t always correct. But to be fair, that’s more of a problem with the PDF format itself, not the Reader’s understanding of what to read.
Also, the Accessibility Reader sometimes reads footnotes or other stuff in the margins because it’s inline with the main text. For example, pages might be numbered with the Author’s last name and first name.
To be honest, Kindle is the best for the Accessibility Reader. Apple Books is in the middle, and Kobo is the worst. (I haven’t tried any others).
My issue with Kindle is that you don’t have access to the actual digital product you bought. If you’re doing research and need to copy and paste from Kindle, it’s a huge pain. So, I’ve been forcing myself to use Books, which is a bit more open for now.
Hope that helps,
Staque
It is still bad
It’s still a poor experience on iOS. On macOS, you have a few more options—but even those only offer a fraction of the features you get from Windows apps such as Bookworm or Paperback.
If you’re choosing between a Mac and an iPad specifically for reading, especially for language learning, that’s where things really fall apart. You need to look up words frequently, and on the iPad in particular, doing that makes it very hard to maintain your reading position. On the Mac, it’s slightly better, but no matter which app you use, you should not expect a smooth or complete reading experience.
The only approach that consistently works for me is exporting books into RTF—or another TextEdit-compatible format—and reading them there. That way, I can underline, italicize, and annotate content for later reference without losing my place.
What’s frustrating is that developers of reading apps on Apple platforms still overlook how people actually read. Many of us need to go word by word, spell things out, and navigate sentence by sentence. Instead, these apps are built around continuous speech playback, as if that’s the only way we interact with text.
Sad to hear that it's still bad
Would Kindle be better then for Braille display users? I don't want to read using speech output but with a connected Braille display instead.
No Idea about Kindle
If you have a Mac, use it for reading with TextEdit—it’s a simple but reliable option. However, if you also have access to a Windows laptop, the experience can be significantly better, especially with braille. NVDA, combined with the BrailleExtender add-on, offers a much more advanced and flexible braille experience.
Kindle is the best but we should complain
Kindle is by far the best reading experience if you wish to use a braille display connected to your Apple device. Every now and again I do keep dipping back into Apple Books to see if there are any improvements, and it does seem to be slightly better, but I keep seeing the phrase actions available every few lines which is very annoying. I am using a 20 cell refreshable braille display connected using Bluetooth. I have written to the accessibility team, and perhaps we all ought to start doing this. The Apple Books app does appear to be very messy and I'm quite interested in the accessibility reader that someone else spoke about. Is this a setting somewhere? I've never heard of it and perhaps it would make the difference. I think, because the apps are built into Apple, people just failed to report them. Although, like I say, it is better. I also think you can look up definitions of words on Kindle and you can select and copy text, but I mainly use it for leisure reading purposes, so have no need to do that very often.
@Kerry Fielding
Hi,
You can remove the, "Actions Available", message. Do the following:
1. Go to Settings, Accessibility, VoiceOver, Verbosity.
2. Navigate to the, "Actions", option.
3. Set it to, "Do Nothing".
4. Enjoy your book!
HTH.
@Kerry Fielding
Accessible Reader is a reading app available on both iOS and macOS. It uses Apple’s high-quality text-to-speech voices, which sound excellent, but the app can be quite demanding on battery life. It’s best used while connected to power. Even on my MacBook Air M4, I notice increased heat and noticeably higher battery consumption when using it for extended periods.