If you like reading eBooks with speech, did you know the Kobo app for the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch is accessible with VoiceOver? This is great news as the Kobo store has over 2 million books in it.
Kobo devices and apps
Kobo have a range of hardware eBook readers sold through the WH Smith chain. Although these have some large print capability, they don't have any speech output.
Like the makers of other hardware eBook readers, Kobo have also created apps for various computer and phone platforms. These are very similar to their hardware devices, but with one big difference - some of the Kobo apps work with the screen readers on these platforms.
It speaks!
We first heard that Kobo worked on the iPhone at the end of June, and have since tested it ourselves and talked to other happy users.
All the same reading options that are available in iBooks can be used for Kobo books. This means you can use the two finger swipe down gesture to start reading a book in continuous mode, or you can change to reading by word or character if you want pay more attention to something or hear how it's spelt.
Unlike iBooks, where the continuous read mode will continue to the end of the book if you don't stop it first, with the Kobo app you can only read to the end of a chapter. Then you have to move to the next page and do the continuous read again.
If you have a Bluetooth braille display, you can use that as well as or instead of speech output.
The Kobo app is also partly accessible on Android phones. I have a Galaxy Nexus running Android 4.1, Jelly Bean, and I can read a book one sentence at a time. The next version of TalkBack for Jelly Bean will feature a continuous read mode, so hopefully this will work for the Kobo app too.
Why this matters
There are two reasons why this is important for eBook lovers.
First, Kobo has a huge number of eBooks for download, and all of these are now available to be read with synthetic speech or braille.
Second, up until now the only eBook app that worked with VoiceOver on an iPhone, iPod touch or iPad was Apple's own iBooks. Kobo have shown that it's possible for other eBook apps to work on the platform, and this may mean other apps become accessible too.
If you have any further information on this topic, we'd love to hear from you at digitalaccess@rnib.org.uk.