Narrator: Welcome to the first of our series of videos on the accessibility features of
the new 2013 Kindle Fire devices from Amazon. In this first video, we're going to show how
you can turn on any magnification or speech facilities the device has.
So, I need to unlock the device and then go through the setup procedure. In order to get
the screen reader working at the moment we'd need to choose "United States" as the language;
the UK language speech will be ready quite soon but it isn't ready yet, we understand.
The next thing I need to do is connect to Wi-Fi.
On the next screen I have to register my Kindle and to do that I have to type in the email
address and password of an existing Amazon account, or create one.
And then it comes straight into some Welcome screens which I have to be able to use the
screen and try a few gestures which will be useful when I come to use the Kindle Fire
for real. There's the possibility that even if I couldn't
read small print very well, I might be able to recognise some of the larger words that
appear on here and that itself can be quite useful.
I'm now going to show you where the accessibility options are and how you can turn them on.
The first thing to do is to go into the Settings area of the Kindle Fire, and to do that I
swipe down from the top of the screen to introduce the menus, and at the right hand side there
is a Settings item. In the Settings menu, towards the bottom, there is an Accessibility
item. The two main areas that are of interest here
for someone with low vision are the "Use Large Font Size" and the "Screen Magnifier" gesture.
If I turn on the large font size, you can see the effect it has immediately because
it takes effect on that menu. The Magnifier can also be turned on. The Magnifier
allows you to turn on screen magnification by tapping the screen three times with one
finger. That magnifies everything on the screen and in order to scroll around the screen now
I have to put two fingers on the screen and I can scroll up, down, and left and right.
I can also put two fingers on the screen and push them apart to increase the magnification,
and I can put two fingers on the screen - separated - and pull them together to decrease the magnification,
so that I can get it to the level of magnification which is preferable for me.
Whenever I change the screen, the Magnifier goes off, but I can reintroduce it by triple
tapping again. To demonstrate the screen reader features,
I need to go back into the same Accessibility menu. To keep things simple, I'm going to
turn off the Screen Magnifier and Large Font Size option, although that's not necessary.
To turn on the screen reader I tap the On button.
Screen reader: Alarm enable Explore by Touch. TalkBack wants
to enable Explore by Touch. When Explore ... Accessibility tutorial. This tutorial teaches gestures needed
to navigate your Kindle when screen reader and Explore by Touch are enabled.
Narrator: Having turned on the TalkBack screen reader, I'm then prompted to turn on Explore
by Touch, and it's important that you do that if you're going to make good use of the TalkBack
screen reader. Once you've turned on Explore by Touch, you're
then immediately taken into a short tutorial that shows someone that hasn't used TalkBack
before, how you can use it to move around screens and choose things.
I'm going to exit the tutorial. TalkBack: Exit button. Accessibility.
Narrator: The Explore by Touch tutorial is always available from the bottom of that Accessibility
menu. TalkBack: Explore by Touch tutorial
Narrator: Once the screen reader and Explore by Touch settings are on, I can then navigate
my screen either by putting my finger on the screen...
TalkBack: Close captioning. Show close captions for videos when available. Double tap to select.
Narrator: And then moving it around. TalkBack: Hearing settings. Use large font
size. Screen Magnifier. Screen magnifier provides gestures to magnify screen. On radio button.
Off radio button checked. Narrator: Or I can just do swipes on the screen.
TalkBack: Use large font size. On radio button. Off radio button. Hearing settings. Close
captioning, show close captions... Hearing settings.
Narrator: And that allows me to explore from the top of the screen to the bottom, without
knowing exactly where on the screen things are. It's faster if I know where things are
because then I can go directly to them, but Explore by Touch allows me to not care where
things are on the screen. There are a couple of things I can do for
changing the voice. For instance there is a reading speed.
TalkBack: Explore by Touch. Decrease rocker button. Reading speed. Rocker button. Decrease
rocker button. 4. Increase rocker button. Narrator: To activate any of the buttons that
I'm on, I double tap the screen. Single tapping the screen just announces what I'm on but
if I double tap... TalkBack: Rocker button changed to 5.
Narrator: And 5, the speed I've got now, is the fastest that the voice can read at.
TalkBack: 5. Decrease rocker button. Rocker button. Reading speed.
Narrator: If you're not used to using a screen reader, you may find this quite difficult
to understand. TalkBack: Rocker button. Decrease rocker button.
Rocker button changed to 4. Rocker button changed to 3.
Narrator: You can also slow it down until you find a speed that is comfortable for you.
One of the things that it's useful to know about something like the Kindle Fire HD is
that it's possible to turn on the screen reader without coming into the Accessibility menu.
If I just turn it off for the moment. TalkBack: Off radio button. Alarm screen reader.
Continue button. Narrator: And come back to the Home screen.
If I press the power button until the power options appear on the screen - and there is
a little tinkle to tell me that that's happened - I can now put two fingers on the screen
and hold them there and TalkBack will begin. TalkBack: Keep holding down two fingers to
enable accessibility. Accessibility enabled. Home.
Narrator: And that's a very useful way that blind user who comes to a Kindle that has
already been set up can start the screen reader feature without having to have someone sighted
go into the Accessibility menu and turn it on. That's also turned on Explore by Touch
... TalkBack: Search button. Shop button. Games
button. Apps button. Narrator: So that I can begin to explore the
screen, whatever is on there. The next couple of videos that we do will
go into more detail about how you can use the screen magnifier and the screen reader
functions in order to read your Kindle eBooks. Thank you.
This video demonstrated the new 2013 Kindle Fire HD running system version 11.3.0.3.