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Got an Ipad can't figure out voiceover/text to speech

2

20vturbo

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Aug 13, 2009
16
0
The biggest reason I wanted an Ipad was so that I could use to read to me books while I commute to work. From what I read prior to release voiceover is the what Apple will use for text to speech according to Wired.com

I went by today to pick it up and the people in the store knew about as much as I did about the Ipad. We sat and played with it for about an hour trying to figure out how to get voiceover to work in ibooks. The store gave up and said just take it home and if you can't figure it out within 14 days bring it back for a refund. I got it home and was able to finally figure out voiceover in ibooks. It's kind of annoying b/c you still have to flip each page to get it to read on through the book. (not a good idea while driving)

Does anyone know if you can just set it to start reading until you tell it to stop?

Does anyone know if you can get voiceover to work within the kindle app? (I have tried everything I know and can't even get it to read a single line in the app)

Any help is greatly appreciated!

Pics for proof!

ab044f34-1.jpg


5ebb3ff9.jpg


615a80be.jpg
 
http://manuals.info.apple.com/en_US/iPad_User_Guide.pdf

In there is an accesibility section which tells you all about VoiceOver gestures. Trying to tutor you (for want of a better word) on how to use vo would be hard going on a forum. ;) Apple explain it better anyhow.

As for the Kindle app - as Amazon caved in to the Authors Guild over tts on the hardware Kindle, I doubt the Kindle ipad app would be VoiceOver compatible either. Not all apps are. So you might be crap out of luck there.

Can't help you on the having to turn pages in iBooks automatically with vo either, as I am in the UK and don't have an ipad yet.
Hope the user manual helps though.
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_1_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7E18 Safari/528.16)

Just as an aside - this won't help you I'm afraid but could I ask you to give me a hand with an ipad question ?
In iBooks you can change the font size. Could you give it a spin and enlarge the font(s) as big as they go, and post a pic ?
I use VoiceOver on my iPhone (and mac) but was hoping to use my remaining crappy eyesight to acually read the books myself in iBooks. If I knew how big the font could go this might give me an idea if this were going to be possible.
Many thanks if you can help me out.
 
If u want an awesome text speech app its called "speak it!" I use it on my iPhone tom ready back emails, and they just updated it with native support for the iPad. Voices are amazing.
 
Maybe you would be better off with actual audiobooks? Check out audible.com, they're owned by Amazon.
 
jsnuff1 said:
If u want an awesome text speech app its called "speak it!" I use it on my iPhone tom ready back emails, and they just updated it with native support for the iPad. Voices are amazing.
Click to expand...

Do you have any idea if it will read continuously through a book or if it will work in the kindle app?
 
LaNex said:
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_1_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7E18 Safari/528.16)

Just as an aside - this won't help you I'm afraid but could I ask you to give me a hand with an ipad question ?
In iBooks you can change the font size. Could you give it a spin and enlarge the font(s) as big as they go, and post a pic ?
I use VoiceOver on my iPhone (and mac) but was hoping to use my remaining crappy eyesight to acually read the books myself in iBooks. If I knew how big the font could go this might give me an idea if this were going to be possible.
Many thanks if you can help me out.
Click to expand...

Sure here is the smallest
78feb89f.jpg


Largest
37e8cc39.jpg


Largest close up
cf389a1c.jpg
 
Stetrain said:
Maybe you would be better off with actual audiobooks? Check out audible.com, they're owned by Amazon.
Click to expand...

yeah I would definitely get that over having it try to read the screen but most of the books I want to read/hear (physics/biology/old stuff) doesn't have enough support for anyone to make audio books for them. :rolleyes:
 
20vturbo said:
Sure

(I snipped out the images)
Click to expand...

Wow- they go pretty big ! Hopefully that should sort me out if I prop the thing on my chest next to my face whilst lying down. lol.
Thanks for that.

You know what you said about the books you like and want to read not being available in audiobook ? Well, I don't know how you'll react to this, but in osx's Automator (if you've got a mac), there is a way to use Applescript and Automator to output text files and the like to spoken audio files, using the built in voice features of osx.
http://automator.us/leopard/examples/ex07/index.html gives details. I don't know how much text this method can stand before it goes boobs up, but it might be worth a go for you. I've only ever used it with small amounts.
This would give you an audio file with the same sort of listening experience as the voiceover feature in ibooks, 'cept you get to choose the voice, and in my experience, the osx version of voiceover is a touch more realistic with its meter, pronunciation, and so on, than the iphone one (which I assume is similar if not the same as the ipad one.)

If you're a windows user then I'm afraid I got nothing. ;)
 
LaNex said:
Wow- they go pretty big ! Hopefully that should sort me out if I prop the thing on my chest next to my face whilst lying down. lol.
Thanks for that.

You know what you said about the books you like and want to read not being available in audiobook ? Well, I don't know how you'll react to this, but in osx's Automator (if you've got a mac), there is a way to use Applescript and Automator to output text files and the like to spoken audio files, using the built in voice features of osx.
http://automator.us/leopard/examples/ex07/index.html gives details. I don't know how much text this method can stand before it goes boobs up, but it might be worth a go for you. I've only ever used it with small amounts.
This would give you an audio file with the same sort of listening experience as the voiceover feature in ibooks, 'cept you get to choose the voice, and in my experience, the osx version of voiceover is a touch more realistic with its meter, pronunciation, and so on, than the iphone one (which I assume is similar if not the same as the ipad one.)

If you're a windows user then I'm afraid I got nothing. ;)
Click to expand...

wow thanks a bunch! I will try it when I get home! This might be the best of everything! :)
 
Seems like it would do great but I can't seem to figure a way to copy the contests of the books from either ibooks or kindle for mac. :(
 
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