[Trainer-Talk] Kindle Fire Tablet/On Sale for $39.95

Tue Feb 9 17:32:03 UTC 2016

Laine,
Many thanks for such an informative response. Is Voiceview a variant of 
Google's Talkback?
Regarding Kindle Unlimited, I don't think that it provides totally 
unlimited access to the Kindle book collection as some publishers aren't 
included. However, for people who do a great deal of reading it still 
may be worth considering.

        David Goldfield,
Assistive Technology Specialist

Feel free to visit my Web site
WWW.DavidGoldfield.Info

On 2/9/2016 10:33 AM, Laine Amoureux via Trainer-Talk wrote:
> VoiceView is the current name of the KF screen reader, and for what I have used mine for over the past 3 months, my only 2 complaints are  the inability to adjust speech characteristics, like speed, on the fly, and there's no quick way to toggle VV on/off.
> I've been using BARD and audible exclusively for books, and only used the browser a bit. Depending on the user, the browser navigation may leave a lot to be desired. You can navigate buy an HTML list,v group, word, character or window only. If I were relying on this to be my primary web browsing device, I'd be frustrated I didn't have access to headings or forms at least.
>
> I have not found, or downloaded, an email client. I have only used the Gmail web app interface through the browser.
> I was unable to find the Google apps for drive and docks. There were some third-party apps for accessing them, but I did not download those either.
>
> I've had it in mind for clients who are new to the tablet world & want basic web access and easy access to books and magazines.
> An ad of interest, but I have not had an opportunity to follow up on, is  Kindle  unlimited. For $15 a month, it appears that you can have unlimited access to the kindle   etext an audible libraries. That seems just a bit too good to be true to me :-) and I plan to investigate, hopefully soon.
> All in all, not a bad device, for even the $50 tag, and many are even willing to pay the hundred, or $120 price tag, for the 10 inch version
>
> Laine Amoureux
> Sent from my iPhone
>
>> On Feb 9, 2016, at 7:13 AM, David Goldfield via Trainer-Talk <trainer-talk at nfbnet.org> wrote:
>>
>> The super-cheap version of this tablet, normally $50, is on sale for around $40 until February 13. It has a 7-inch display, two cameras and, even though it comes with 8 GB of RAM, is expandable due to the SD card slot. The reason I mention this is that the Kindle discussion list for the Visually Impaired, called Vi-Kindle, was inactive for what seemed like over a year but is now magically alive again, buzzing with messages. Originally, it was set up to discuss using the original Kindle Readers, particularly the Kindle Keyboard or the Kindle 3, which had some accessibility. I acquired one of these as a gift several years before I got my iPhone and I used that little reader constantly, as between it and Bookshare a whole world of books was open to me. When the new Fire tablets came out, accessibility on the tablets received mixed reviews and the readers began to be totally inaccessible. Between these events and the development of the iPhone app, it's understandable that interest from
>   blind folks in Kindle devices began to decrease. However, all of a sudden it was as though someone flipped a switch and now Vi-kindle is alive, with people talking about how much they are using their Kindle Fire Tablets.
>> Here's what little I know, as I don't own any modern Kindle devices. The Kindle devices, while there are tons of them, can be divided up into two groups: e-readers and tablets. The e-readers are like the Kindles of old; their main function is to allow you to read books. Their online functionality is pretty limited; I think you can access Wikipedia and some of them came with an experimental Web browser but unlimited Web access is no longer available in these devices, a story for another message. Anyway, you can browse the online Kindle store where you can browse books to your heart's content and, of course, can buy as many as you want. Books are downloaded wirelessly in less than a minute, and some devices don't even require a Wifi connection, which is what made them so popular and so unique. These e-readers, as far as I know, have no accessibility at this time although some of them did, such as the now discontinued Kindle Keyboard model.
>> The Kindle Fire models are typical tablets, running a modified version of Android 5 or Lollipop as it's called. It has all of the reading functions found in the e-readers although you do need Wifi to make them work (some did come with limited cellular capability.) However, the Fire has a Web browser and can run other Android apps for mail, podcast listening and everything else you'd expect from a tablet. Amazon incorporated a screen reader into the KF, with the unimaginative name of Screen Reader. Screen Reader was a modified version of Talkback, the screen reader you normally use with Android devices. As I said, reviews on its performance were mixed and I got the feeling that blind people pretty much gave up on the Kindles, especially when the Kindle app for iOs became so accessible, along with iOS itself. I don't know if my perception was accurate but there are, apparently, some people who are reporting improvements in Screen Reader and one person on the list suggested to me that
>   the reviews I had read about Screen Reader were out of date, an opinion I'm sure is valid considering how rapidly software changes these days.
>> Anyway, while I don't own a KF and so can answer hardly any questions about it I did want to let you know that at least some people are reporting good results with their Kindle Fire units and, if you were ever considering buying one, this might be a good time.
>> Incidentally, the Vi-Kindle group is also on Freelists.
>> To subscribe, I am assuming you send a message to
>> vi-kindle-request at freelists.org
>> and type
>> subscribe
>> into the subject line.
>>
>>
>> -- 
>>        David Goldfield,
>> Assistive Technology Specialist
>>
>> Feel free to visit my Web site
>> WWW.DavidGoldfield.Info
>>
>>
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