VoiceView
VoiceView is an accessibility tool for visually impaired users to the Kindle products.
[edit] Overview
After rolling out to its Kindle Fire tablets, Amazon is ready to bring VoiceView functionality to its line of devoted e-readers. The accessibility feature, targeted at visually impaired users, will be hitting the Kindle paperwhite first, shipping as a bundle with the reader. It is built-in to the Basic Kindle 8 with connection via Bluetooth to headphones/earbuds.
“Like VoiceView on our Fire tablets, VoiceView for Kindle supports linear and touch navigation, and the same broad range of speech feedback rates and earcons,” the company’s Accessibility Architect Peter Korn wrote in a blog post. “Likewise, we developed a tutorial with multiple lessons that users can return to at any time.”
Along with the six-inch Kindle paperwhite 3 reader, the $140 package includes a Kindle Audio Adapter, a dongle that plugs directly into the paperwhite’s charging jack. This enables text-to-speech functionality so visually impaired users can listen along to the book by connecting a pair of headphones (not included) to the dongle. Amazon’s also throwing in a $20 Amazon account credit to off-set the price. The hardware is available separately.
VoiceView features IVONA's award-winning natural language text-to-speech voice.
Note that this product does not support audio-books or music, only TTS.
