Nexus 10 tablet Play Books with speech

Nexus 10 tablet Play Books with speech

Welcome to this short introduction touching on some of the facilities that the Nexus 10 tablet has for a speech reader using it as an eBook reader

The Nexus 10 is an Android tablet from Google. It has two benefits compared with many other Android tablets. Firstly, it runs the latest version of Android, which currently is version 4.2, also known as Jelly Bean. And secondly there is no "skin" - a skin is additional software that some manufacturers add to their device to change how it looks and works, and the problem with a skin is that it can disrupt the accessibility features built into Android.

One other thing about using the Nexus 10 is that it is possible to actually have two or more accounts set up with very different settings. So we can have two people with different levels of sight loss each running the machine with their preferred settings, and that is a very nice feature to have so that you're not having to always switch back and forth.

Android 4 has a built-in screen reader called TalkBack, which I can turn on by going to the Settings area, and then finding Accessibility, and lastly, TalkBack, and I just need to turn that on.

It should say something – if it doesn’t simply tap an area of the screen and we should find

When TalkBack is on, your device provides spoken feedback to help blind…

That it speaks. On the latest version of Android, it’s possible to set up a shortcut, so that you can hold down the power button, and when the “power off” sign comes on, you hold down two fingers on the screen and wait, and after a few seconds, you should get a message saying that TalkBack has been turned on. The benefit of this of course is that it enables a blind person to turn on TalkBack without having sighted assistance.

When you turn on TalkBack, the gestures of the Android device change. For instance, if I just touch something now…

Talkback:

Home

TalkBack tells me what it is, but it doesn’t activate it. I can also swipe across left and right across the screen to move left and right between the items on the screen.

Settings, on, settings, users, personal, location access.

On any of these, I would double tap the item in order to activate it. So to come out of this screen, I could find the Home button

Recent apps, home

And then tap twice.

Home

I can use the same gestures to find the Play Books app on my home screen.

Home screen, home screen, play books

And then double tap.

My library

The first time you go into Play Books, and before you can read any of the books you’ve bought, you would need to sign in to your Google account, which you can do from the menu at the top right of the screen

Navigate up, search, more options,

It’s the “more options” button as far as TalkBack says. But once I have books on the screen, I can just scroll to the book that I want to read

Drop down list, arc 1 point 4, options, Breakout by Richard Stark

And then double tap the button on the screen in order to open that book.

Play books. One of the nice things about this low-impact routine, you could have a quiet conversation under the music because

There are various other navigation features I can use, such as two finger swipes to move forward and backward a page, or even using the table of contents button which is on the menu at the top of the screen, in order to jump to a particular chapter of the book. However, how well these features work with the TalkBack screen reader does depend very much on the specific book that you’re in.

One last thing to mention about TalkBack, is if you want to turn it off. If you’re a screen reader user yourself, you probably won’t want to do this, of course, but if you’re working with someone who is a screen reader user, there is a very quick way you can turn it off by using a specific gesture, which a kind of “L” shape – down and to the right.

TalkBack:

Four, page one hundred … touch the screen and explore in a circle to find an item, then lift to select.

There’s various things I can do from this screen, but one of the things is move my finger up to the top left and there is a “pause feedback” option

Pause feedback {earcon}

That’s paused TalkBack - although there is a little icon at the top left of the screen that I could use to reactivate it - and now that TalkBack is turned off to all intents and purposes, I can go into the Settings menu and turn it off from there. So, I go back into Settings, find Accessibility, and TalkBack is on and I can turn it off like so.

You may have noticed I have a service here called BrailleBack. This is an app that can be downloaded from the Play Store – it’s the BrailleBack app from the Eyes Free Project – and with that and a Bluetooth braille display, I could have my book being read to me, or I could read my book, on a Bluetooth braille display.

I hope you found this quick introduction to some of the accessibility settings useful to a screen reader or braille reader on the Nexus 10 tablet useful.

This video featured the Play Book app version 2.8.69 on a Nexus 10 tablet running Android 4.2.2

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RNIB supporting blind and partially sighted people

RNIB – supporting blind and partially sighted people

Registered charity number 226227