Hi there, using iPhone 13 mini, latest IOS and latest Kindle update. Downloaded a Kindle book sample today, only to learn that text to speech is not enabled and that VoiceOver is not supported. Is this a Kindle issue or a Voiceover issue and who do you suggest I contact to find out if this book can be made readable through text to speech and if so, how can I proceed further. Many thanks.
Comments
print replica
Hi Doreen,
It used to be the case that most textbooks on Kindle weren't supported by VoiceOver because they were in print replica format. Even if you used screen recognition, these books would just keep scrolling and scrolling, and you couldn't stop VoiceOver to see how things were spelt or whatever. A few months back, some textbooks I had tried which previously weren't accessible on Kindle for iOS became perfectly readable with VoiceOver without any screen recognition. What book is it? Is it fictionn, non-fiction or more specifically a textbook or educational material of some sort? Incidentally, if you read the product details on Amazon's website for a book, if it says 'screen reader not supported', or 'text to speech not enabled', this means it isn't supported for the Kindle for PC app, but will most likely work with VoiceOver on iOS, and this is without using screen recognition. Maybe if you let me know the book, I could try the sample if it's available here in the UK Kindle store. I don't know how to contact Amazon's accessibility department. I've googled a few terms but nothing useful came up. I've just tried the two textbooks I bought when the print replica format started working with VoiceOver a few months ago. One of the books keeps crashing, I've reinstalled Kindle and tried the book on my iPhone 12 mini and my iPad air 2020, and it crashes every time. I managed to open it once, and it started rreading, but I closed the app then opened the book again, and the app now crashes every time I read that book. Removing and downloading the book gives the same results. The other textbook I bought seems to be working fine, even though it announced 'VoiceOver does not support this content' when I first opened it. I've opened the book several times and the app doesn't crash. I don't know what's going on here. I'll report that one of my books keeps making the app crash in the feedback section in the Kindle app. That might be the best place to report this issue with VoiceOver for the time being.
KINDLE FOR IOS AND VOICEOVER
Hi Tara, many thanks for your excellent response to my question about Kindle and the inability to read some books using voiceover. I don’t quite understand the principle of print replica so maybe you can explain that to me. I have not tried reading it on Kindle for PC, but will try downloading the Kindle app and see if it works on my laptop. In the meantime, the book is by an author called Roger Day and the book in question is called pirates of the airwaves. It is about the pirate chips that were operating in the UK in the mid 60s, and it is an autobiography. Any more information you can give would be helpful .
hi again
Hi Doreen,
I'm not really sure about the purpose of print replica. The only thing I know is, up until fairly recently when I used to look at the product details for a book, it told me the format was print replica so I knew it wouldn't work with VoiceOver. Now it seems to vary. I tried the sample of the Roger Day book, and it works on my phone no problems. I've just tried the book with the Kindle app on my computer and it works fine here too. I'm using NVDA. I haven't downloaded a kindle update to my iPhone for a while now. In fact, I looked in the list of updates for apps that need updating on my phone and Kindle isn't there, and it isn't there in the recent updates either. Maybe you could try either downloading the sample again or re-installing Kindle. The only thing I can think of for reporting is to go into the help option, I'm pretty sure I saw some sort of feedback thing there. I'll try reporting the issue with my book later on.