{"id":1769,"date":"2013-05-07T09:49:23","date_gmt":"2013-05-07T13:49:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.equipmentlink.org\/blog\/?p=1769"},"modified":"2013-05-07T09:49:23","modified_gmt":"2013-05-07T13:49:23","slug":"kindle-app-accessibility-572013","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.equipmentlink.org\/blog\/?p=1769","title":{"rendered":"Kindle App Accessibility, 5\/7\/2013"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kindle App Accessibility<\/strong><\/p>\n

Contributed by Joel Zimba, Special Projects Coordinator, MDTAP<\/em><\/p>\n

On May 1, Amazon finally added VoiceOver support to their Kindle App<\/a> for the iPhone.\u00a0 Finally, this long-awaited, and most would say long over-due, barrier to E-book accessibility has vanished.\u00a0 Now, if it’s published electronically, you can probably buy it and read it in an accessible format.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

I then purchased some content only available through the Kindle store.<\/p>\n

My choice was a piece by a local author, Justin Sirois.\u00a0 After making my purchase, I re-opened the Kindle App and my new book was waiting for me.<\/p>\n

After opening the book, a two-finger swipe downward begins continuous reading.\u00a0 The app behaves much like iBooks, and the Nook app.<\/p>\n

To avoid confusion, it’s worth pointing out that progress with accessibility is confined to the iOS app.\u00a0 The Kindle devices themselves are still as inaccessible as ever.\u00a0 Also, the ability to read content with VoiceOver is not\u00a0restricted to only selected books as is the text-to-speech option on the Kindle hardware.<\/p>\n

The long battle with Amazon is now technically over.\u00a0 This is most significant as E-books in schools are becoming increasingly common.<\/p>\n

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