I never realized Siri can read out loud emails and web pages

[joflo723]

Digging into my phone last night, I found the accessibility options for the visually impaired. Turned on Speak Selection and now anything I can highlight can be read to me by Siri (web pages, emails, etc). Great feature to use while driving. This may be common knowledge to many, but I just figured it couldn't be done because of Siri telling me "I'm sorry joflo723, I cannot read your emails to you." Does anyone know if doing this requires data / connecting to Apple's servers (such as when you use Siri for other things)?

Jo

 

[BSben]

I might be wrong, but I think a data connection is not required.
I think it is not the actual Siri feature reading the text, but the old voice over feature. They just happen to have the same voice, like you can use Siri's voice on the Mac for reading (at least in the UK).

 

[FSMBP]

Digging into my phone last night, I found the accessibility options for the visually impaired. Turned on Speak Selection and now anything I can highlight can be read to me by Siri (web pages, emails, etc). Great feature to use while driving. This may be common knowledge to many, but I just figured it couldn't be done because of Siri telling me "I'm sorry joflo723, I cannot read your emails to you." Does anyone know if doing this requires data / connecting to Apple's servers (such as when you use Siri for other things)?

Jo

BSBen is right. Siri cannot read emails to you. You can use VoiceOver (which is different from Siri) to read everything that's on your screen. For example, VoiceOver will read an email with its formatting "Dear John, New Paragraph: The meeting has been moved to 3").

 

[Sheldonsmith]

Cool feature. Thanks for pointing out.

 

[AlphaHumanus]

Cool. Didnt know about that. Tried it out just now, and the change in gestures and usability of the phone itself was crippling. Good to know however. I hope that in the future, Apple will give Siri some hardware-side capability and allow this kind of thing.

I know a lot of people are concerned with the effects on battery life, but I really wish Siri could be activated by voice...

 

[alec6542]

Digging into my phone last night, I found the accessibility options for the visually impaired. Turned on Speak Selection and now anything I can highlight can be read to me by Siri (web pages, emails, etc). Great feature to use while driving. This may be common knowledge to many, but I just figured it couldn't be done because of Siri telling me "I'm sorry joflo723, I cannot read your emails to you." Does anyone know if doing this requires data / connecting to Apple's servers (such as when you use Siri for other things)?

Jo

Indeed. In fact this feature has made me very lazy. I almost never read articles on my iPhone anymore, I always hit the little "reader" button at the top, hold and swipe a portion of the page to the right with a finger to select all, and hit "speak selection". It's nice to plug it into my car and "listen" to my RSS feed articles on the way to work/school.

 

[ike08]

Indeed. In fact this feature has made me very lazy. I almost never read articles on my iPhone anymore, I always hit the little "reader" button at the top, hold and swipe a portion of the page to the right with a finger to select all, and hit "speak selection". It's nice to plug it into my car and "listen" to my RSS feed articles on the way to work/school.

Same here. Thanks for pointing out the hold and swipe to the right to select all. I always struggle trying to select all the text .