Test to Speech?

[demingite]

My mother is losing her eyesight to where even the biggest fonts on her e-reader are barely big enough. I have heard about text to speech on the Kindle. I understand that it is not available for all books, but is it available on all models? If not, which models do offer it? I can't find the information on the amazon site.

Thanks

[tubemonkey]

It's available on Kindle Touch and Kindle Keyboard.

Not available on the $79 Kindle because it doesn't have an audio player.

[soulfuldog]

It's just the basic Kindle 4 (non touch) that has no text to speech. The Kindle Touch and the older Kindle 3 (Keyboard) both have this feature.

You need to look through the "At a glance" section on each individual model to see the mention of:

Read-to-Me
With Text-to-Speech, Kindle Keyboard/Kindle Touch can read English-language content out loud to you.

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by demingite

My mother is losing her eyesight to where even the biggest fonts on her e-reader are barely big enough. I have heard about text to speech on the Kindle. I understand that it is not available for all books, but is it available on all models? If not, which models do offer it? I can't find the information on the amazon site.

Thanks

Have you considered audiobooks? They're playable on many MP3 players and readily available in quite a few public libraries.

[NicholasV]

The text to speech is a gimmick at this point, you really cannot use that feature for long. It is just too clumsy and inhuman to be able to stand for long. I used it for a little while eating my cereal which doesn't take long and I was annoyed even for that short duration. There is a Project Gutenberg equivalent for audiobooks called Librivox that freely makes available public domain books. There are also tons of great sources for educational Podcasts, my favorites are the program Unwelcome Guests, and the Gary Null Show.

Also losing your eyesight has more to do with straining to see, stress and such factors not genetics or a natural feature of aging. Have her try the Bates Method by the dissident ophthalmologist William Horatio Bates. Also alot of times old retirees tend to sit idly by in their twilight years and not stimulate themselves. My grandma acts like a vegetable that constantly watches Greek tv 24/7 and she complains also that she can never see anything to read. If you don't use your abilities they tend to atrophy.

[emellaich]

Originally Posted by NicholasV

The text to speech is a gimmick at this point, you really cannot use that feature for long. It is just too clumsy and inhuman to be able to stand for long.

I guess it's all in the 'ear' of the beholder. I use the Kindle TTS quite frequently. I will readily admit that you must be tolerant of both the voice and it's mispronunciations, but I find it to be quite serviceable.

As you noted, some books don't allow tts; however there may be a way around this. I may remember incorrectly, so you should check this out yourself. However, I think that, in the US, there is a specific exemption allowing you to break DRM (copy protection) if you are visually impaired. This would allow you to legally buy a kindle book that doesn't allow TTS, to strip its DRM and to enable its TTS.

It's not that difficult a process. On the web you might search to see what Apprentice Alf has to say about removing DRM. the next step would be to use Calibre to convert it from .mobi to .mobi. This enables TTS. Please note that this process only works because you have removed DRM, and that removing DRM is usually not allowed in the US. The specific exemption you want to search for to insure this is allowed in your case would relate to a US copyright office exemption to allow DRM removal for the visually impaired.

[Darqref]

Originally Posted by demingite

My mother is losing her eyesight to where even the biggest fonts on her e-reader are barely big enough. I have heard about text to speech on the Kindle. I understand that it is not available for all books, but is it available on all models? If not, which models do offer it? I can't find the information on the amazon site.

Thanks

Couple of suggestions here:

1. Audio books, as stated above. Depending on your library, there are usually audiobooks available for checkout. Most are on CDs, there are still some on cassette tape (but these are declining as libraries decline to buy new ones), and there are also downloadable e-audio books and occasionally a "player", which looks like an mp3 player with only a single book installed on it (you check out the whole device, including earphone and spare battery).

2. If your mother is actually legally blind, then get a doctor to certify this. Then, find the "library for the blind" for your state. This will link to a national library for the blind which can check out audio books in a protected format for which there are no legal audio versions. The current player machine is digital, and uses books put onto a usb stick in a protected format. The protected format is required because the service is legally allowed to distribute these books ONLY to those who are legally blind. (My mother has been blind for years, but only recently decided to try the library for the blind, since the local library (kcls.org) has a relatively large selection of audiobooks.)


Notes: Audiobooks in public libraries are subject to what is commercially available. Many/Most mid-list authors have not had their older works made into audiobooks, and a given library frequently does not have all those which might be available. This is frustrating, and is one reason why one might seek to use a text-to-speech version instead. Then you trade the un-available audiobook for the not-yet-available ebook version.

I understand that there are free-standing software products that can convert a text file to an mp3 file using the machine voice. There are supposed to be "hints" that you can insert into the text file so that the software does a better job of reading it, and this appears to work. However, the work of adding those hints is not trivial, and wouldn't be done routinely - and I don't know what those hints would look like to a person actually reading the text file.