1. LEARNING KINDLE FOR PC WITH ACCESSIBILITY AND A SCREEN READER Norman Coombs Norm.Coombs@gmail.com

2. TODAY’S AGENDA Setting up the Kindle on your PC Exploring the menus with a screen reader Kindle's 9 basic shortcut keys Reading with Kindle Text-to-speech voices Getting and reading e-books from Amazon Create a document in the Kindle format

3. GETTING & INSTALLING KINDLE FOR PC WITH ACCESSIBILITY IMPORTANT! get and download ‘Kindle for the PC with Accessibility’ as the regular version is not accessible to screen readers Install it by following its standard prompts You will find some sample Kindle e-books in the Kindle ready to read www.amazon.com/kindle/accessibility

4. WHY REGISTER YOUR KINDLE? Many Kindle books are locked using digital rights management and can only be used by its purchaser When your Kindle is registered, it can “talk” to the purchased book enabling your Kindle to read the book This requires you having an Amazon username and password

5. KINDLE HARDWARE & SOFTWARE DEVICES The stand-alone, hand-held Kindle is still not genuinely accessible You will be told it can read out loud to you which is usually true However, the menu interface does not speak, and you can’t find or navigate a book! The software ‘Kindle on the PC with Accessibility’ will interface fairly well with most major screen readers

6. KINDLE FOR PC WITH ACCESSIBILITY SUPPORT Support on Amazon for ‘Kindle for PC with Accessibility’ has been hard to locate Most support and similar information available appeared to focus on the plethora of hardware devices Some of the menus of ‘Kindle for the PC with Accessibility’ items appeared to reflect an application designed to be connected with other Kindle devices 6

7. OPENING VIEW OF KINDLE

8. KINDLE’S 5 MENUS The primary benefit of this application is that it made the interface accessible to screen readers Some menu items did not seem to work when not connected to a hardware device, but most items provided navigation to the applications main features. The main menus are: File View Go Tools Help

9. FILE MENU Open book Close book Remove from device Download new collection Delete collection Duplicate collection Rename collection Import collection Add book to collection Remove book from collection Exit

10. Full screen Display options Sort by Show notes marks Show document navigation Popular highlights Color mode Zoom VIEW MENU

11. Library Cover Table of contents Beginning Location GO MENU

12. Bookmarks Manage your Kindle Sync and search for new items Options TOOLS MENU

13. Help Send feedback Buy a Kindle Check for problems About Kindle HELP MENU

14. KINDLE FOR PC WITH ACCESSIBILITY READING Your PC Kindle menus interact reasonably with the major screen readers Besides many navigation features, you can select a book from your Kindle library & go to the file menu & open it Screen readers cannot access the actual book content & read that Kindle has both male & female text-to-speech voices which will read the book content to you

15. Control+I will prompt Kindle to provide you with basic beginning information Control+R will prompt Kindle to start reading from the top of the page The spacebar will both pause and resume reading The left arrow goes to the previous page The right arrow goes to the next page Control Shift+Cc will toggle between reading by page or reading continuously Shift and plus directs Kindle to read faster Shift and minus directs Kindle to read slower Control+Shift+V will toggle between male and female voices KINDLE’S 9 READING SHORTCUT KEYS

16. READING YOUR KINDLE BOOKS Before reading, it is worth taking the time to familiarize yourself with the Kindle menus with your screen reader Now, try opening and closing your sample books Try changing speed, voices and switching between reading continuously or by page

17. SAMPLE OF KINDLE READING VOICES PRETEND YOU ARE USING A SCREEN READER (THIS IS WHAT IT WOULD BE LIKE!)

18. MORE KINDLE SHORTCUT KEYS The ‘F1’ key in Kindle connects online to basic information at Amazon It provides a short overview of your Kindle It has a number of both general and accessibility reading shortcut keys and you may want to know more than the 9 basic reading keys provided here Remember this is only available when you are connected to the Internet

19. FINDING & DOWNLOADING KINDLE FREE BOOKS Go to the tools menu, click on 'manage your Kindle' and log into your Amazon account You will be located on a Page 'Kindle store', look for the link to 'Kindle eBooks' and click on it Find the link to free collections, click on it and find a book you like

20. DOWNLOAD THE FREE BOOK YOU SELECTED Having found a book, click on that book and another page comes up On that page click on a link that the screen reader sees as 'buy digital feed' the link appears as “Buy now with 1 Click” (for the free book, the cost is $0.00) On the following page you will be thanked and told to click on an item to deliver the book to your Kindle, but the screen reader sees a jibberish link which includes "...go_to_kindle... It should show up on your PC Kindle

21. FINDING & BUYING KINDLE BOOKS Go to the tools menu, click on 'manage your Kindle' and log into your Amazon account You will be located on a Page 'Kindle store', look for the link to 'Kindle eBooks' and click on it Books are listed by several topics and categories Select a category and select a book

22. Like with free books, having found a book, click on it and another page comes up. On that page click on a link that the screen reader sees as 'buy digital feed' the link appears as “Buy now with 1 Click”, It will be charged to your Kindle account On the following page you will be thanked and told to click on an item to deliver the book to your Kindle, but the screen reader sees a jibberish link which includes "...go_to_kindle... It should show up on your PC Kindle BUY & DOWNLOAD A BOOK

23. CREATING A DOCUMENT IN THE KINDLE FORMAT Send a Word document as an attachment to mobi@robobraille.org mobi@robobraille.org In return e-mail, you will get an attachment in the MOBI Kindle format Copy it to the ‘my Kindle content’ folder in the ‘my documents’ directory Now you can read it with Kindle

24. WEBINAR RESOURCES This presentation and related resources will be at: (easi.cc/archive/kindle2013/resources.htm) Schedule of future Webinars is at: (easi.cc/clinic.htm) Schedule of future month-long courses is at: (easi.cc/workshop.htm)