Kobo Books

I've been using this app for almost 3 years and, although it did have a period of total inaccessibility, it has been working well for a long time now. The version I have is 5.3 as I'm in France and this is the latest version available here. Buying books cannot be done from within the app, but it is easy to do. The search results on the Kobo website appear as level 3 headings. The purchased book appears automatically in Library in the app. The Library button is just above the Library label at the bottom left of the Home screen. 6 titles appear on each screen of the Library, and a three-finger swipe up will show the next screenful. Double tap a title to open the book. I find Kobo easier to navigate than iBooks.

There appear to be conflicting views on the accessibility of the Kobo app, so it would be interesting to hear what any other Kobo users have to say.

After reading Anne's comments I went back and spent some more time troubleshooting version 5.9 of the Kobo App on my iPhone 4S and was able to successfully navigate my library and read books, two functions I was unable to perform during my initial test run. Here's what solved these issues for me. 1. The issue of no book titles being read by VO in the Library screen was fixed by logging into my Kobo account. After I logged in, all titles showed up and were read properly by VO. When I signed out again, only 3 items remained in my library and VO did not read any of the titles. 2. The problem where the phone was locking up for 15 seconds at random times was probably related to the initial downloading of the full book. This time, after I logged into Kobo, I opened a book, _Ghosts of Spain_, let the phone sit for a while, and then was able to navigate and read the book without experiencing any delays.

After reading the comments about improving accessibility when using this app, I thought I'd give the latest version released in June a try. I created a Kobo account on my desktop, then signed into it on my iPod Touch. That was fine, but after that I couldn't seem to do anything. Voiceover didn't read any of the free book titles, so I chose one at random. A screen came up with a synopsis of the book, but most of the buttons wouldn't work, such as the Read Now button. The only other button I tried was the "Next Tooltip" button, which brought up a screen where I could review the book. Until Kobo decides to add true Voiceover accessibility to this app, similar to iBooks or Kindle, I'd stay away from it. They have two Twitter accounts: @kobo, and @kobohelp in case anyone wants to try contacting them that way.

v6.2 came out in early December and I tried it on my iPad mini and my iPhone 4S, both running iOS 7. I can't read my books on the iPad mini at all. On the iPhone, a setting needs changing, and I can't find a way of doing this with VoiceOver running. If you can get a sighted user to do it for you, it's then possible to read your books. Here's the detail. Using VoiceOver, I have two major issues on the iPad. First, the Sign In screen is read as "web store container", and I'm not able to enter the required details. The only way around this is to turn VoiceOver off, sign in and then turn VoiceOver on again. Not ideal, but so long as I don't sign out again, I only need sighted assistance once. The second iPad issue is that VoiceOver constantly interrupts itself with "page 1 of 3", "page 2 of 3" and "page 3 of 3" at roughly 6 second intervals. Although it's just about possible to put up with this while browsing the library of my books, it makes reading a book impossible. I notice that before I've signed into Kobo, the app cycles around three screens giving information about the app, and I would guess that the interruptions are related to these screens. On the iPhone, the sign in screen works OK. When I tried the v6.2 update before Christmas, I got the same interruptions as with the iPad. But I've just tried it again and the interruptions no longer happen. This seems odd, but I'm happy if it means my books read OK. However, on the iPhone I can no longer access the iPhone toolbar menus that appear at the bottom of the screen when I double tap while reading a book - although the menus appear on the screen, VoiceOver acts as if they aren't there. You have to be able to get to these menus at least once, in order to change the page transition setting to "scrolling", after which a two finger swipe down reads a chapter of a book. If this setting isn't changed from the default setting of "none", you can only read a book one sentence at a time by swiping right; a two finger swipe down does nothing but cause the app to hang. The change to "scrolling" only has to be done once, by someone not using VoiceOver, after which I can read my books with VoiceOver. I'd be interested in knowing what experience other VoiceOver users have with the v6.2 Kobo app.

This needs to be updated. As of 2025, the app is accessible.

I don’t know if it’s only me, but I thought I’d check in here because honestly, this app seems to be a bit of a mess. Is there any way to get the pages to turn automatically while using VoiceOver, or is that just not something this app is able to do? I contacted the developers and, yeah, they said they’ll look into it—but I figured I’d ask here in case anyone has tips or tricks that work From an accessibility standpoint. The one thing I really don’t like about using these kinds of apps is how small the pages are. The amount of text per page is tiny. I get that this is probably due to how the book format is set up, which in itself isn’t a huge deal—but it becomes hard to read when I constantly have to be swiping to change the page. And again, maybe it’s me, but I still don’t understand how that’s supposed to be accessible.

How exactly are we supposed to turn the page? I’ve tried using three fingers to swipe left, right, up, down—you name it—but nothing happens. The page doesn’t change. It feels like this is one of the least accessible book apps I’ve tried to use.
I’m also testing out Everand, since they have some books that aren’t available on Kindle Unlimited. And I have to say—it’s not as bad as Kobo. At least with Everand, I’m able to go online, copy the link to the book, and then open it in the ElevenLabs Reader. I can’t do this with Kobo at all. They keep pointing me in the direction of Adobe digital edition, which, to my knowledge, is also not very accessible.