First instinct tells me no. But hey the world is not accessible so maybe my standards are to high. Ha.
I was asked to demo the new Kindle DX by the disability services office at the college I work at. They are looking at the DX as an accessibility tool for low vision and LD students and thought I would be a good test subject since I myself happen to be dyslexic.
Over the years I have benefited greatly by text to speech software, books on CD/tape and being able to follow along through text highlighting while listening to text to speech. When I first researched the Kindle and learned that a voice reader was standard for the new version's I considered purchasing on myself.
I received it today! I like the size and the weight. Seems pretty user friendly and I was able to download a couple of books within minutes after setting up my account. I have played with the voice reader a bit as well as the text size. So far I am not impressed with the device as a voice reader. There are two voices available (male & female). Both are fairly robotic sounding and don't begin to compare to the AT&T or Acapela voices. I immediately noticed pronunciation difficulties. I am also disappointed that there is not a highlighting feature that follows along as the device reads. I was also hoping that the DX allowed for you to change them text color (ex. white text/black background or white background/black text, etc). I have yet to find this feature on the DX but know that it is available on the Kindle iphone app.
I plan on using the DX over the weekend and I am hoping my experience is more positive then my initial thoughts.
