The new Kindle 2 is much more likely to have a place in a classroom for learners with multiple or intensive disabilities with some of the changes that have been announced. The biggest news for our students is the new text-to-speech feature. The voices are not the state of the art ones most of us with Dynavox or similar device users are accustomed to hearing, but you can change the pitch. While I hardly see the Kindle 2 as an accessible device until the pages can be turned with a switch or two, the text-to-speech could be a selling point for some of our students.
So where is it? Where is the e-book reader that has a great voice and/or switch accessible page turning? Has anyone hacked a new or old kindle to make page turning switch accessible? Is Dynavox, Tobii ATI or PRC planning on adding some e-book accessibility to there devices anytime soon?
Hi Kate,
ReplyDeleteWe have added an accessible ebook reader to the Series 5 software for DAISY and text formatted files and support access to Bookshare.org for those folks with an account.
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Bob Cunningham
CTO, DynaVox Technologies
bob.cunningham@dynavoxtech.com
Give bookshare.org a look
ReplyDeleteIf your students have a print based disability it is an amazing, free resource and works with most devices and several software programs
Hey Kate you must have been reading my mind because I was planning on adapting one but have not had the funds as of yet to purchase it to adapt it for our library but as time has gone on I think that it would be better if it had scannable features similar to the i-pod scan
ReplyDeleteDave s