Quote:
Originally Posted by Deskisamess
Kindles do have TTS...
From the Paperwhite product page:
VoiceView screen reader, available over Bluetooth audio, provides spoken feedback allowing you to navigate your device and read books with text-to-speech (available in English only). Kindle Paperwhite also includes the ability to invert Black and White, adjust font size, font face, line spacing and margins.
The biggest difference is that current Kindles do not have speakers, so you have to use Bluetooth earbuds or headphones, or I suppose a Bluetooth speaker if it could be paired correctly.
iDevices offer voice over, essentially the same thing as TTS. Android devices most likely have the same thing.
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In my opinion, this is not Text To Speech. It is for people with vision issues. For anyone else, it makes navigation more onerous and some features are not accessible.
Again, compare with Fire tablet, which has separate features for TTS and VoiceView, which are independent of each other and target different requirements.
For some, VoiceView may be an acceptable substitute for TTS but for me it is too much of a tradeoff. I’d like to see them add the less intrusive TTS (same as what Fire offers).
The iOS feature is called Speak Screen, a subset of full blown Voice Over. It is more lightweight than VoiceView, and has the merit that it is easy to toggle on and off