Kindle App Accessibility
Contributed by Joel Zimba, Special Projects Coordinator, MDTAP
On May 1, Amazon finally added VoiceOver support to their Kindle App for the iPhone. Finally, this long-awaited, and most would say long over-due, barrier to E-book accessibility has vanished. Now, if it’s published electronically, you can probably buy it and read it in an accessible format.
To test how well Kindle works with VoiceOver, I installed the update and confirmed that yes, I could read the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, which had been open to a random page until the day I could actually read it.
I then purchased some content only available through the Kindle store.
My choice was a piece by a local author, Justin Sirois. After making my purchase, I re-opened the Kindle App and my new book was waiting for me.
After opening the book, a two-finger swipe downward begins continuous reading. The app behaves much like iBooks, and the Nook app.
To avoid confusion, it’s worth pointing out that progress with accessibility is confined to the iOS app. The Kindle devices themselves are still as inaccessible as ever. Also, the ability to read content with VoiceOver is not restricted to only selected books as is the text-to-speech option on the Kindle hardware.
The long battle with Amazon is now technically over. This is most significant as E-books in schools are becoming increasingly common.
