If you've encountered problems trying to read ebooks in the past, you might like to know about two recent developments which have removed some of the common problems and frustrations.
Reading ebooks
Some libraries, publishers and booksellers like Waterstone's, WH Smith and Mills and Boon let you use their website to buy or borrow books, but you must then use a free application called Adobe Digital Editions to read the book. Up to July 2011 this application was not accessible for blind and partially people: it did not honour Windows screen colour settings, did not work well with screen magnification software, and did not allow screen reading software to read the content of books. This meant that even if you bought a book, you might not be able to read it.
Now many of those problems have been removed, thanks to a new, improved version of Adobe Digital Editions, making it easier for blind and partially sighted people to read ebooks independently. RNIB and other international groups have worked with Adobe on this. Adobe Digital Editions 1.8 Preview means that blind and partially sighted people can use colours that change according to the theme chosen, and can use full keyboard navigation and a menu system.
Most importantly, blind and partially sighted people can now use screen reader access to and navigation of the content of books, on both Windows and Mac computers. You can read ebooks using synthetic speech, or read them with a braille display if you have one. Screen reader access on Windows is limited to JAWS version 12. Although there are many issues still to resolve, this is a great step in the right direction. Hopefully Adobe will expand accessibility to other screen readers in future.
Kindle for PC: new version
The second development is a new version of Kindle for PC, which was released in May. You don't need a Kindle ebook reader to use this. This software allows you to read Kindle ebooks on your computer which you have downloaded directly from the Amazon website: it contains a text-to-speech engine within it, which is specifically for reading ebooks.
If you need to use text-to-speech, you must also have a screen reader for navigating the Home screen and menus, as the internal text-to-speech only works when you open a book and want to read the content. There are very few navigation controls or other options, but the major advantage is that the text-to-speech does work on all Kindle ebooks, even those where the text-to-speech has been disabled by the publisher.
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