If you are blind or partially sighted, you may well know large print and audio versions of newspapers are available from organisations like TNAUK, the Talking News Federation or RNIB. But did you know that some national newspapers are also available on an eReader or tablet computer?
The newspaper versions available from third parties are summaries rather than the actual stories, or they require a computer or smart phone to access them, or they are only available some time after the original stories are published.
An alternative is to use newspaper websites, but these also require you to be able to use a computer or a smart phone. They can also be complex, and difficult to navigate. Also, these websites have rolling news - stories which are updated frequently - rather than the information contained in the print versions.
If you want to be able to read the news as it appears in the printed paper, and at around the same time, a relatively new possibility is to use your Kindle, Sony Reader or iPad. On each of these, you can buy a single copy of a newspaper, or subscribe and have each edition delivered as soon as it's available. A growing number of national newspapers and magazines are available, as well as a few local newspapers.
Kobo owners may like to note that while their website says they "currently do not offer newspapers and magazines in the United Kingdom", this leaves open the possibility that at some point they will offer them.
Kindle and Sony Reader
On the Kindle and Sony Reader, the purchase or subscription process itself is not accessible with the large print facility, nor does the Kindle Keyboard's speech work here. If you rely on these facilities, you will need to have access to a computer, or to ask someone else to make the purchase or set up the subscription on your behalf.
Once this has been done, the issue you have bought is delivered to your eReader. If you've subscribed to a paper, each day's edition is delivered early in the morning, so that it's there for breakfast.
eNewspapers on these devices are not simple electronic versions of the print title. They are the text and titles of the main articles, grouped into sections. There are no adverts or puzzles. There is an overview screen which gives the main sections and article titles, and an article screen showing the content of a single article.
Kindle - text on the article screen can be enlarged or read with Text-to-Speech. The overview screen cannot be enlarged, but can be read with VoiceGuide on the Kindle Keyboard.
Sony Reader - the overview screen is not changeable. Text within the article screen can be made larger, and the background darkened.
iPad
The iPad system works slightly differently. The iPad has an app called Newsstand, and within this you can download apps for particular titles. Each app is different, but usually you can purchase a single edition or subscribe for one month. The purchase or subscription process is accessible with either Zoom magnification or VoiceOver speech.
iPad magazine apps have no standard way of displaying content. The information may appear exactly as it does in the print version, including advertisements, or it may be reformatted for the iPad screen.
One downside to this is that accessibility varies widely between titles. The best offer VoiceOver access to text, but with little or no information relating to headings, and poor navigation. A small amount of magnification is available within some titles, and Zoom can be used across all titles, although this would be a difficult reading experience due to the non-linear layout of most pages. Links within a story may move to the website of a newspaper.
Conclusion
It's good to know that eReading devices offer a further alternative to existing solutions for access newspapers. eReading is still evolving, so the hope is that the situation outlined above improves over time.
For more information about the Kindle, Sony Reader or iPad, visit RNIB's eBooks pages: www.rnib.org.uk/ebooks.