Reading Kindle books where TTS is not enabled

Submitted by musicjunky on Sunday, October 25, 2020.
Forum
iOS & iPadOS

I found a recently released book on Amazon Kindle that I really want to buy, but the product page says text to speech is not enabled. Before I try to buy this book, I want to know the answer to this question. Can I still read the book using VoiceOver on my iPhone, even if TTS is not enabled? Or the Amazon Echo, for that matter? Is that feature for all devices or just for Kindle tablets?

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Comments

Submitted by Lysette Chaproniere on Sunday, October 25, 2020

Member of the AppleVis Blog Team

Yes, you can still read it with VoiceOver on your iPhone even if text to speech is not enabled. It just means you can’t use the text to speech on a kindle device. The only kindle books VoiceOver doesn’t support are print replicas, and even with those, the new screen recognition does quite well at getting the text.

Okay, I think I'll buy it then. I was just wondering whether that was for Kindle devices only, appears it is. And I have an iPhone 8, so according to what I've heard, I don't get the new screen recognition.

Submitted by Cowboy on Friday, October 30, 2020

If you ever see screen reader not enabled, this doesn't happen much any more, in fact, I haven't had it happen in a couple of years, you can't read it on Kindle using a PC and a windows screen reader. You can still read it with your phone, just not with windows and a screen reader. If you see screen reader enabled you can read with both.

I realize that this wasn't exactly what you were asking, but it might clarify some things for some people. I don't think there are any Kindle books out there, at least none that i've come across, that can't be read with an iPhone or iPad.