Siri help with audiobooks

By That Guy, 4 June, 2015

Forum
iOS and iPadOS

Long time lurker, first time poster. My wife is legally blind and has tactile disabilities the prevent her from using a keyboard, or touch screen with any accuracy. She's successfully used an iPod Classic for years with velcro on the action buttons which has allowed her to use it to listen to audiobooks which she thrives on.
About a year ago I got her an iPod Touch Gen 5 with ios 7.1.2. She was thrilled that she could now text friends and do things she could never do before. One thing that has held her back from making the full transition to the Touch however, is that while we can get Siri and Voice Over to play nice together when it comes to basic music commands and sending/reading texts, etc, we can't seem to get it to fast forward, or rewind by a given amount. We've tried "Fast Forward XX seconds", "Jump Forward XX seconds" or "Skip Forward XX seconds".
These are Audible audiobook files imported into iTunes and sync'ed to her iPod Touch. She claims she was able to do this previously, but in the last couple of months it has not worked. I can find no evidence online that Siri has ever been able to complete this command, but she's rather insistent. I've also tried it on my iPhone 6 with iOS 8.3 with no success.

Does anyone have any ideas, or can offer any advice?

Thanks in advance for your consideration,
Timw

Options

Comments

By DPinWI on Thursday, June 25, 2015 - 02:02

Are you using the same app to read books? I have no idea how to do what you want to do. I am wondering if the commands worked with a different app, or different version of the app?

A slight tangent... Have you explored the accessibility settings for mobility disabilities? Aassistive Touch might help with the touch screen accuracy.

By That Guy on Thursday, June 25, 2015 - 02:02

In reply to by DPinWI

Using the default Apple music app.
As I mentioned, unfortunately my wife's tactile disabilities preclude her from being able to use any of the assistive touch controls hence the need to find a voice control solution using Siri.

By riyu12345 (not verified) on Thursday, June 25, 2015 - 02:02

This isn't possible. You can most probably skip using the butttons but i don't know since i've not put music or books on my phone in ages.

By James O'Dell on Thursday, June 25, 2015 - 02:02

Hi. Is there any chance your wife could use a Bluetooth keyboard with Velcro on the keys for controlling music? Many Bluetooth keyboards allow you to control music playback. In addition if you hold the "previous track" button on most headphones it should rewind and "next track" should fast forward although I don't know if this works in the Audible app. There is also a specialist product aimed at Voice Over users called the Rivo remote which is a bit like a Bluetooth keyboard and which basically works like a remote control with buttons. I have never seen this so don't know if you could put Velcro on them. IF none of these solutions are suitable, you might have to look beyond IOS to a specialist talking book player designed for blind people, of which there are a number which support audible books. These have more tactile buttons which are easier to use, even than the Ipod classic. Obviously if you are considering one of these devices you would need to get your wife to look at it to see if she could use it first.

By Shersey on Thursday, June 25, 2015 - 02:02

I'm not entirely sure how these work, but if I understand things, you can hook up a special device, called a switch, to your wife's iDevice that will let her control her iDevice. These switches are for people who have limited use of their hands.
The following links might prove useful:
iOS: Switch Control helps you navigate your iOS device - Apple Support
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201370
What is Switch Control mode in iOS? | Komodo
http://gettecla.com/blogs/news/15538916-what-is-switch-control-mode-in-ios

Thanks,
Shersey