Reading on a mobile

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If you have a mobile phone, it's possible you can use it to read audio books or eBooks.

Many modern mobiles allow you to add apps to them. This is usually done through an online repository, for instance Android phones have the Play Store and iPhones have the App Store. You usually have to create an account with the relevant store, but most of the apps are free.

Audio books

Audible is a seller of audio books recorded by a human voice, and there is a free Audible app for many kinds of smartphone. Once you have it, and you have created or signed into an Audible account, you can use it to buy new books, download them to your phone and listen to them.

Alternatively, you can use a computer to buy your Audible books, and then transfer them from your computer to your phone using the Audible Download Manager.

If you don't want to use Audible, it may still be possible to move audio books onto your phone and play them with your music player. The downside to this is that it may not be easy or possible to bookmark your place when you stop reading.

eBooks

There are very many eBook readers for phones. Most of these are intended for unprotected books, in other words not ones from the major eBook sellers like Kindle or Kobo. Some of these may work with the screen reader or magnifier on your phone.

When it comes to the eBook readers from the big companies, they're all quite similar.

  • They are all free
  • They have three screen colour options - black on white ("day mode"), white on black ("night mode") and black on off-white ("sepia mode").
  • They allow a choice of font and font size for the content of a book.

However, most of these apps will not allow you to read a book with your screen reader using synthetic speech. Currently the ones that do include 'iBooks' and 'Kobo' on an iPhone, and 'Play Books' on an Android phone running Android 4 (Ice Cream Sandwich) or above. Annoyingly, there is no Kindle app that is accessible for a phone.

If you hear of another app that works with your screen reader, we'd love to hear about it. Please email any thoughts you have on reading eBooks or using downloadable audio books to ebooks@rnib.org.uk.



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Posted at: 27/11/2012 4:40 PM by Moderator

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