Please make all your books Text to Speech enabled 😀
Being blind and unable to read print, I find the Amazon Kindle’s text to speech facility a huge boon. For anyone who is unaware of the text to speech facility, when activated, it reads aloud books where the author/publisher has enabled speech. While the reading voice is robotic, it has improved over the years and (in my experience) once the reader becomes lost in a good book, it is easy to forget that a dalek is doing the reading!
The majority of books in the Amazon Kindle store have text to speech enabled. Of those which do not, most (perhaps all) are available as audible downloads from audible.co.uk/audible.com. However, Audible titles are, on the whole more expensive than their Kindle counterparts, which means that someone who is unable to read print must (if the text to speech facility is not enabled on the Kindle version) spend more to obtain the…
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Chris The Story Reading Ape's Blog 
Thanks Kevin for your article I checked my book but the closest I could get for text to speech facility is installed the Accessibility plugin. So if a person has a Kindle app then they can free update Kindle for PC (or Mac; Android etc) with Accessibility Plugin https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=200596280 This installs Text to Speech under Tools when a book is opened on Kindle. Likewise for a pdf go to: View, Read out aloud, Activate. and the book or even pdf document will be read aloud.
Thanks Chris for sharing Kevin’s article. I have shared via https://www.facebook.com/suzanne.newnham.77 and https://www.facebook.com/suzannenewnhamwriter/
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Chris, I told Kevin this is enabled on all of my books, but I don’t recall seeing it as an option when I published. Do you know if this is an option or automatic? I’ve searched but can’t seem to find an answer ♥
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Chris, please excuse me responding to a comment addressed to you. Tina – my understanding is that text to speech is enabled by default. Authors/publishers can, however turn it off on a title by title basis. Back in 2009 the Authors Guild put pressure on Amazon to allow the turning off of text to speech, (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/4927034/Amazon-backtracks-over-Kindles-read-aloud-function.html). I haven’t seen any information to indicate that the situation has changed, so assume that that it remains possible for authors/publishers to disable text to speech on individual titles. However I would be delighted if someone can show that the position has now changed and all titles must be text to speech enabled. Kind regards, Kevin
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Thank you, Kevin. I’m glad to know this option is enabled by default. It’s a shame this is even an issue. What’s to be gained by disabling it? In addition to being cognizant of the needs of our fellow human beings, I’d think all authors would want to reach as many readers as possible ♥
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I really it was an option, Tina – unless Amazon have changed it 😀
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Thanks, Chris. I’ll pay closer attention to this in the future ♥
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I will look into this.
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Thank you, Annette. Best, Kevin
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😀
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Many thanks for reblogging, Chris. Kevin
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Welcome, Kevin 🙂
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