How Can I Have Kindle Ebooks Read Aloud To Me On My Phone

I had a call this week from an adult with dyslexia wanting to use text-to-speech with the Kindle app to assistance him read books on an Android tablet. Y'all would expect this to be relatively straightforward, but it took over two hours of investigation and I'm however non sure that I found the 'best' solution. I should brand it clear that I chop-chop decided to call the enquirer back, rather than leave him hanging on for a couple of hours!

Do 'standard' text-to-speech options piece of work with the Kindle App?

From past feel of Kindle apps I wasn't expecting the 'standard' Android solutions to work, just I decided to give them a try. I first tried the Select to Speak facility in available in recent Android versions (See my colleague, Craig's blog from 5th July.) This lets you select a block of text and have it read dorsum automatically, simply having selected some text from a Kindle volume, I just got a spoken message saying "no text institute at the location".

I next tried the Google Text to Speech system, equally described on the TunesGo web site, only to see that, as I suspected, it does not piece of work with the Kindle app.

What about the TalkBack Screen Reader?

Screenshot from TalkBack video A Google search for "Android Kindle Text to Spoken language" came up with several YouTube videos and web pages describing the employ of the TalkBack to read text from the Kindle app. This 1 looked promising as information technology showed the employ of TalkBack in the Android 6.01 (Marshmallow) operating system - the same as I had on my telephone. Unfortunately my phone doesn't seem to accept TalkBack and it looks very dissimilar from the one in the video. (Trying to support somebody using an Android can be a nightmare every bit yous can never be sure what their operating system looks similar.) I had to revert to using TalkBack on an old Hudl. It did piece of work, only it was painfully slow. TalkBack is designed for users with a visual impairment, but can be very confusing for a sighted person, especially for someone with dyslexia. You accept to acquire a totally new set up of gestured and information technology is easy to forget something crucial and become totally stuck. If this happens, you may exist tempted to use a two-fingered gesture, but it won't help! Would I recommend TalkBack for a user with dyslexia? Definitely, non!

What DOES work?

The best, cheap, solution that I could discover involved the apply of the Like shooting fish in a barrel Text Reader app, in conjunction with the Heather Scottish voice from Cereproc. (Availability of Heather, Stuart and many of the other excellent Cereproc voices, for only £0.59, is one of the few advantages that Android devices have over the iPhone / iPad. You can hear samples of the voices on the Cereproc web site.) Other voices are built into the Android operating system, or can exist bought from other companies , e.k. Acapela.

Once you take found a voice you like and installed information technology you'll need to brand sure that it is selected as your default voice.

Choosing Text to Speech Options

The verbal procedure for doing this will vary depending on the version of the operating system, but it volition exist something similar this:

Tap on Settings
Scroll down to Linguistic communication and Input
Scroll down to Text-to-speech options and cull your vocalism
You may as well want to adjust the Speech rate and Listen to an instance.

The next phase is to install and run the Easy Text Reader app, then load the Kindle app and open your volume. Easy Text Reader volition automatically read any text that has been copied. Unfortunately, the Kindle app doesn't have a facility to Select

All text, then yous will accept to do this manually, which tin can be a flake fiddly. Tap and Hold on a word so that handles appear beside the word, so movement the handles to the beginning and cease of the text you lot want to read. Now select Re-create from the Menu that should be on your screen and the text should be read out loud. The Copy option may appear as a word, or as anicon with 2 pages, one on top of the other.

Selecting text in the Kindle app

The best choice?

Using an app such as Piece of cake Text Reader works, but information technology is far from ideal. Selecting text to read out can be fiddly and there isn't a way to automatically read text from i page to the next. The 'best' option is probably to utilize the Kindle Immersion Reading facility, which

combines the Kindle text file with an Aural audio file. This provides an excellent user feel with a loftier quality narration by a human voice, usually that of an actor, or the writer, combined with highlighting of text equally it is spoken and a shine transition from one page to the side by side. It tin be costly as y'all demand to buy both the Kindle and Audible versions of the book, though the Audible price is discounted. The availability of Audible files is also an outcome. There are currently over iii million Kindle books but only

Immersion Reading

around 200,000 Audible versions available. Not all of the Aural files take been adapted for use with Kindle, so immersion reading volition only work with a small-scale fraction of the Kindle books - admittedly this fraction includes about 'pop' books. If y'all choose this option, there will probably still be times when you will have to use Piece of cake Text Reader (or a similar app) to have the text read out.

Is there a better choice?

These are only the options that I establish - mayhap yous know of a better solution?