[nabs-l] Fwd: IPad EBook to use voice over

[Kerri Kosten]

Hey All:

not sure if many of you saw this or not, but this looks like good news
on the ebooks front. I received this from the list for blind users of
Apples Iphone.
Hope you all enjoy! This sounds like great news and for once it sounds
like blind/visually impaired Ipad users will have access to an Ebook
store almost like on the Kindel.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Joney <talk2owen at gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 12 Mar 2010 18:03:24 -0500
Subject: IPad EBook to use voice over
To: viphone at googlegroups.com

Thought some of you would be interested in this considering the run round
Amazon had.



Apple's iBooks Store and Reader to Support VoiceOver

12 March, 2010 @ 3:19 pm by Lioncourt



As Apple began taking pre-orders today for its new iPad device, they
released a few more details about the product. Most exciting among these for
VoiceOver

users is the news that iBooks, the application that doubles as a digital
bookstore and electronic book reader, will support VoiceOver.



Apple's

iBooks page

describes its accessibility thus:

Block quote start



Unlike a paper book - or e-books on other devices - you can change iBooks on
iPad to suit the way you read. Turn iPad to portrait to view a single page.

Or view two pages at once by rotating to landscape. Change the text size.
Even change the font. Touch and hold any word to look it up in the built-in
dictionary

or Wikipedia, or to search for it throughout the book and on the web. iBooks
works with VoiceOver, the screen reader in iPad, so it can read you the
contents

of any page. Even with all these extras, reading is so natural on iPad, the
technology seems to disappear.

Block quote end



Our readers will remember the

controversy last year

when the

Authors' Guild

tried to block text-to-speech on Amazon's Kindle book reader, claiming that
text-to-speech was equivalent to audio book performances by human narrators.



The guild will find it much harder to argue that bizarre stance this time,
as the access is being offered via VoiceOver rather than a generalized
text-to-speech

option. By taking this approach, Apple will be providing VOiceOver users
with a streamlined experience, and putting the

Authors' Guild

in a position of specifically having to oppose access for visually impaired
users to their content. We do not believe the guild will want to try to take

such a hostile stance.



The iBooks application will also work as a reader for free books in ePub
format, whether that content was purchased from the iBooks store or not.



Once again, Apple is putting visually impaired users on equal footing with
their sighted fellows.





Joney

"If God can bring you to it,
He will lead you through it."

Email: talk2owen at gmail.com
Join me on:
Twitter: http://twitter.com/talk2owen
Gratitude log: http://www.GratitudeLog.com/join/talk2owen
FaceBook: http://www.facebook.com/talk2owen



-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
Groups "VIPhone" group.
To post to this group, send email to viphone at googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
viphone+unsubscribe at googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/group/viphone?hl=en.