Read2Go
Description of App
Read2Go is the most accessible DAISY book ereader for iOS. From within the app, you can browse, search, download, and read books directly from Bookshare using your Bookshare membership, as well as read DAISY books from other sources. The app gives you full control over visual choices for font size and color, background and highlighting color, and text-to-speech preferences. Read2Go features word-by-word highlighting for multi-modal reading.
“The Read2Go app will offer many advantages for people who are blind as well as those who have physical or learning disabilities, including many features not available on other DAISY readers for Apple devices.” - Deborah Armstrong, Alternate Media Specialist for DeAnza College in Cupertino, California
Features:
- Direct access to Bookshare
- Fast and seamless browse/search and download of Bookshare books
- Opens encrypted Bookshare books
- Bookshelf organizes your downloaded books
- Bookmarks
- Auto-resume reading position
- Displays Table of Contents
- Full support for all 6 levels of DAISY navigation built in to structure of book
- High-quality Acapela voices, one male and female, for highly natural narration
- Fully compatible with native Apple accessibility features such as VoiceOver
- Synchronized word-by-word highlighting and reading words out loud
- Control of font size up to 70 pts
- Control of text-to-speech audio, either on or off for text-only or text-to-speech mode
- Control of rate of audio
- Reads DAISY 3.0 and 2.02
- iTunes transfer of non-Bookshare DAISY books to your device
- Support books up to 4MB
- Educational institutions wishing to purchase 20 licenses or more can get a discount through the Apple Volume Licensing Program for Education
Version
Free or Paid
Compatibility
Device(s) App Was Tested On
Accessibility Comments
This is beautifully accessible, and comes up with great introductory information and help. The direct access to Bookshare is extremely convenient. You have the option of using VoiceOver or reading with the (U.S. English) Heather or Ryan voices that are included with the app. Voice rate is controllable, as is font size, color of background, foreground, and highlighting for low vision users. A single universal version of the app works on all devices. You can also connect via Bluetooth to specific Braille devices. An excellent first version of this app.
VoiceOver Performance
Button Labelling
Usability
Other Comments
I'd love to see support for other language voices, or even options to purchase additional voices (e.g. U.K. English) via in-app purchase. I think it's particularly useful that they include a high-quality male Acapela voice with the app, since some VoiceOver users have reported difficulties with using the female voices that are currently the sole options for VoiceOver on iOS devices.
Comments
#1 Finally!
I have been waiting for this, impatiently, since it was announced back in January. I hope it lives up to my expectations.
#2 iPod Touch users: do NOT get this app
If you are on an iPod Touch or iPhone (other than iPhone 4), do not get this app yet. Reading is okay with the tts, if you don't get low memory warnings, but reading with VO instead of the app's tts causes extreme delays and makes the app completely unuseable. Even with the app's tts, low memory warnings will be nearly constant. Users also report similar, though less extreme, problems on iPads and iPhones. This would be a good app if they made the tts optional so that it didn't kill the battery and ram of the iOS device.
#3 I'm using a 4G Touch. The
I'm using a 4G Touch. The first two attempts at listening to a book received the memory errors, even though I had nothing else in the task switcher. I did a reboot and it worked without further memory errors.
Downloading a book to the Touch was really easy. Nicer than jumping through hoops to get stuff on iBooks. The download was faster than the actual opening of the book.
Both Heather and Ryan are too slow. Even at the default 100%. I wasn't able to get VO to read any text. I'd rather the lower quality VO speech at a decent clip, than the higher quality Read2Go voices plodding along, or at least have the option of choosing.
I can't lock the screen and listen to the text. I'm guessing that's an iOS thing, but it really limits battery life to have both TTS churning, and screen burning.
What they have Right is quite good. If they can optimize the performance so it reads faster, that would be very nice. I don't regret being a first day adopter, but I am hoping there's an update sooner than later. Given the long delay in getting Apple's approval, who knows. Maybe they used the time well and have some cool updates coming.
#4 Instructions for Enabling Reading with VoiceOver
Here's how to enable book reading with VoiceOver:
1. Double tap the Settings button.
2. Double tap Audio.
3. Double tap Read2Go Audio to turn off the built-in text to speech.
4. Double tap the Back button or use the two-finger scrub gesture.
The built-in text-to-speech voices are no longer available, but book content is now exposed to VoiceOver.
#5 Thanks
That helps a lot. This is what I get for posting early impressions! Ha.
I also figured out that 100% audio rate is not as fast as it goes. It appears to max out at 260%. It's very choppy that fast,. I find 200% to be okay. And, not having the navigation issues that occur when VO is on is nice too.
#6 Comparison to InDaisy Reader?
Hi Everyone,
To those of you who have used both Read2go and InDaisy Reader, I would greatly appreciate reading a comparison of the functionality of the two apps. I have InDaisy Reader, and I have been quite happy with the app since they updated it a couple of months ago. InDaisy reader allows you to download books directly from Bookshare, it has the Heather voice, you can listen to heather while the screen is locked, and you can pause and play the book with the mic button on the ipod earphones.
#7 Let your voice be heard!
They've set up a feedback forum where you can submit your ideas and vote on other people's ideas. These problems with VO are currently ranked number thirteen because many sighted users are posting to the forum with ideas that are less useful for us. Go to www.read2go.org and select the link for User Feedback.
#8 Read2Go feedback is not very accessible
I agree that we should be posting and voting on the feedback forum (click support from the Read2Go iTunes page), but the forum is not very accessible. Getting to create a new idea is difficult: do a search, click the "create an idea" button, then find the fields at the bottom of the page. To post, go to the "title" edit box and press enter from there, since there is no submit button. Voting on ideas seems impossible at this point, and there is no easy way I know of to view all comments for an idea.
#9 More convvenient than the
More convvenient than the vookshare website. Love it!
#10 Read2go: from a braille user's perspective
The version used for this write-up is version 1.0.1.1
Logging in and searching for material is a simple process that is supported through both Voiceover and a braille display. Once you are logged in, unless you log out, it will remember your credentials.
Searching is also nicely put together. Once you select the search tab at the bottom of the doc, you then are presented with another series of tabs related to searching: Title, Author, and ISBN number. Select the appropriate field to search the database of books for whichever method you wish to search, and then select the text field to enter data.
Also within the search screen are some browsing options: latest, popular, categories, and periodicals. you can browse any one of these items and select the material you desire to know more about. A synopsis follows the download button. Obviously, to download content, select the download button. Once the chosen content has been downloaded, the app will give you the time it took to download the selection, and ask you if you wish to read the content now. Selecting no will add it to your bookshelf, and selecting yes will open the content for reading.
Accessing downloaded content is quite easy. When you load the app, you will be placed on your bookshelf which contains all of the books you have downloaded to your iDevice. At the bottom of the screen, you have options to sort them by author or title. Selecting a book will bring up any synopsis information along with the book's title and author. To the right of this info is the read button, which allows you to open the downloaded material and begin reading it.
In terms of reading the books, navigation is well supported to jump between different heading levels of the DAISY content. This works very well for newspapers and other periodicals to jump between articles and sections.
The only issue with this app is that when reading a book, you must advance page by page or section by section. It's good for people who need to know specific page numbers for research purposes, but is not quite so conducive to reading a novel. While having to advance to the next section or page is a slight inconvenience, what is more of one is the need to manually navigate to the next page button. You can not, for example, use the o-chord on the braille display to go to the next page or section. Also, once you advance to the nextsection or page, the cursor is still placed at the bottom of that nextportion of text you have navigated to. it would be more practical for the cursor to be automatically placed at the top of the next page or section. It would also be useful for Bookshare to develop a reading mode that would support continuous reading which would not require the user to navigate the book other than to scroll while reading. Having this as a separate mode would also keep the navigation by section or page feature available for users of textbooks and materials where page numbers are more relevant.
overall, the app is well developed for a first release, and I hope that Benetech will take these suggestions in to account. it would make the reading experience more of an enjoyable one for those using braille displays for reading, and would also help those not wishing to use the built in text-to-speech engine to read content more smoothly.
#11 Giving Away Three Free Copies ...
Hey Everyone,
To support the developers of this accessible app and also as my way to celebrate March Into Literacy Month, I'll be giving away three copies of this app. To get your free copy, please contact me with your Apple ID and a book review of a title you've recently read.
#12 I use the British VO voice
I use the British VO voice because I prefer male voices. Voice over seems to read much faster than the built in speech. Also, the ability to switch from single page to section is under the visual settings. Why Read 2 go felt this was a visual setting is beyond me.
I wish this app did a better job of keeping my place when returning to a book. Not only des it loose my section in the book, when I enter the text field using a left or right flick, the text immediately routes to the beginning or end of the text field.
One feature that I liked but seems to have been lost was the ability to copy my unpacked books directly from itunes to my booksense. These days my newest books are not copying to Itunes at all.