Book Apps For the iPhone

By Holly, 19 November, 2011

Forum
iOS and iPadOS
I'm wanting to find a good app on the iphone to use to read books, but I really don't want to have to use VO to read with. Does anyone know of any apps that are accessible with VO and will read books allowed? Thanks.

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Comments

By Sean Terry on Monday, November 21, 2011 - 22:20

iBooks does a great job in reading books. I have taken books with the .txt extention and used Stanza on windoes to convert them to the epub format and was able to add them to iTunes and they were then put in to the iBooks app and ready for my reading pleasure. Stanza is a bit strange at first and may not seem at all accessible, but, you just have to press the alt key with the f key to get into the menu system, you will have to open a text file in this menu and convert it in the same maner. Hope this helps, It sure did help me.

By Piotr Machacz on Monday, November 21, 2011 - 22:20

Hi sean, The poster is actually asking for an app with integrated TTS, he doesn't want voiceover to read it, which is how you read in iBooks. Fair enough, I never thought vocalizer voices were good for book reading. Your best bet would probably be voice reader. You can read txt and PDF files with it and the voices are really good. It also works with the headset remote, so you can have the screen locked and still control the playback. HTH

The app itself is $1.99. You can use the voices online up to 1000 characters, or purchase them for offline use (99 cents each). Thankfully though if you need to restore or anything at some point, the app does feature restore, so you don't need to pay multiple times for a voice if something breaks. Since you can try a lot of characters online, picking a prefered voice shouldn't be hard and the app does come with a few files just the right size to try the voices on.

Oh, it is fine. Sorry about that. I like Voice Reader as well. Isn't there a couple of voicesalready available in the app for offline use?

By Darrell Hilliker on Wednesday, March 21, 2012 - 22:20

If you are a Bookshare member, their Read2Go app may be another option. You can choose to read books using VoiceOver or you can choose between the built-in Heather or Ryan voices. Check out http://blindaccessjournal.com/2012/01/never-leave-home-without-your-books-bookshare-read2go-for-ios/ for a demo / teaching podcast all about Read2Go!