Quote:
Originally Posted by Spinningwoman
Using the iPhone screen reader with Voice Control turned on gets rid of all the clumsiness of special gestures that don’t work etc. it works really well with Kindle and Apple Books apps and less well but OK with Kobo. Libby has a weird ‘read aloud’ mode especially for screen readers that is very unpredicable and sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t. So once a day I say ‘Siri, turn on Voice control’ and it does. Then I say ‘command mode’ to voice control to stop it thinking I’m dictating stuff. Then I just have to say, eg, Speak Screen when I’m on a Kindle app page for it to read to me. I can also use it to switch apps, like if I am in the bath and don’t want to touch my phone I can say Open Kindle, Speak Screen. Swipe left, swipe right for turn pages if it isn’t in the right place. It’s a game changer.
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You don't need Voice Control, just enable Speak Screen in Accessibility settings, Spoken Content. The only 'special gesture' is 2-finger swipe from top (admittedly, it is tricky on iPhone). Or you can enable Speech Controller there so it remains on screen, ready to use whenever you want to use it.
(But yes, Voice Control is awesome in its own right)
The main issue with Speak Screen is that few reading apps support it. Only Apple Books does it perfectly. Kindle is okay, but does not do the word highlighting at all, and doesn't support it in Scrolling mode. They want you to buy audiobooks and use immersion reading, which does these things (arguably it is a much better experience than TTS, but it shows what Amazon's priorities are).
Kobo 'tries' to support it but it can't turn pages without going off track (I just tried it. In one case the page turned and SS just went away. In another, it turned page, started reading the middle of the next page, in a completely different voice.) So it is not stable enough to be useful. They have enabled speakable content, but that alone isn't enough. And this has been true for years. Their priority is selling dedicated reading devices; accessibility features don't make them any money and they aren't big enough in the market to attract a lawsuit to force them to do it (as in Amazon's case).
Google Play Books reads one page and stops. Its VoiceOver support seems pretty good, 'continuous reading' seems broken currently.
Another issue: Pause/resume function on headset controls don't work correctly with Speak Screen (Apple issue). It will pause, but not resume. Or if media player has something queued up, pausing Speak Screen will start playing that, and then pausing media will resume Speak Screen (therein lies a workaround?). And I think taking calls probably doesn't pause/resume correctly as it would for media (at least it didn't last time I checked).