Voice Guide Demonstration: Take a listen ^^

[Varin]

My own little demonstration in case anyone is interested in this aspect of the K3.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LP9uFKC3dZw

[Kindle Convert]

Very cool!! 

[kb7uen Gene]

Interesting and it looks like Amazon did a pretty good job on it's implementation.  One thing I did notice however is that when that menu came up on the home screen the TTS didn't announce it for some time, and didn't announce the initial menu items the person passed over.  This doesn't totally surprise me because the Kindle still has a lag when I move from item to item with the 5 way controller on the KDXG.  I don't know how much faster the processor is in the K3.

But one thing I can say in all fairness to the Voice guided menus, is that when I have used screen readers on phones in the past, I have out paced them as well because I can move faster than the screen reader can keep up with what I am doing.

Finally, I looked at the user guide, and I didn't see anything about setting the voice guided menu feature to start up automatically.  If the blind person still has to start it every time they wake up the Kindle, it is going to be really tough to do without audible feedback unless there is a hotkey combination which can be evoked to start up that feature.

What we need is a totally blind Kindle 3 owner to walk the device through it function and features to really get a good sense of how the voice guided menus work.  The blind Kindle owner isn't going to get ahead of the interface like a sighted Kindle user would.

Gene

[Varin]

I don't think it needs to be set up every time you turn on the Kindle: just once... I'll try it out now.  

As to why it didn't announce the initial items it passed over, I was going to show that you had to go to the settings menu to turn it on first, that took a second. You hear a very faint little pop, and then it starts reading your selected item.

EDIT: Lol, turned it on and put it to sleep, and it said, "Screensaver". It only needs to be turned on once.

[nogdog~6op6ou]

Thanks for the upload.

[Muddypawz]

I'm amazed at the great speech quality.  Thanks for posting this, Varin.

Melissa

[kb7uen Gene]

Thanks Varin,

That's great news.  So what does it do when you turn in on again after putting it to sleep?  Also, I wonder what happens when you have it set up with a password?  And with the talking menus on, have you had a pop up message box come up and if so, did the TTS read it to you?

Thanks Gene