Okay, maybe this is something that was really obvious to everyone else, but I only came across it last night:
You can configure the Home button on your iPad to quickly toggle the VoiceOver feature on/off.
Settings -> General -> Accessibility -> Triple-click Home -> Toggle VoiceOver
Note: Yeah, I know this feature probably came from the iPhone 3G/GS, which means it has been around for over a year -- I still have an iPhone 2G that doesn't come with it]
This has made the built-in text-to-speech feature much more useful to me, now that I don't have to launch the Settings app and crawl through layers of options just to enable it.
Although I don't suffer from any visual impairment, I like to use this feature when proofreading outgoing email or when I'd simply rather listen to a long article or blog post being read.
For now VoiceOver only reads a paragraph at a time (probably to avoid ebook/audiobook licensing issues similar to the ones the Kindle first had to deal with). Also it takes some time to get used to how the Accessibility mode changes the touch interface.
Still, I think it's a pretty nifty feature.
You can configure the Home button on your iPad to quickly toggle the VoiceOver feature on/off.
Settings -> General -> Accessibility -> Triple-click Home -> Toggle VoiceOver
Note: Yeah, I know this feature probably came from the iPhone 3G/GS, which means it has been around for over a year -- I still have an iPhone 2G that doesn't come with it]
This has made the built-in text-to-speech feature much more useful to me, now that I don't have to launch the Settings app and crawl through layers of options just to enable it.
Although I don't suffer from any visual impairment, I like to use this feature when proofreading outgoing email or when I'd simply rather listen to a long article or blog post being read.
For now VoiceOver only reads a paragraph at a time (probably to avoid ebook/audiobook licensing issues similar to the ones the Kindle first had to deal with). Also it takes some time to get used to how the Accessibility mode changes the touch interface.
Still, I think it's a pretty nifty feature.