More iBook Details Emerge
PrintMore details emerged about Apple’s upcoming iBook app just a few days ago when the iPad preorders began. Two things were confirmed that will be of interested to libraries and librarians, I think.
The first is that Apple finally confirmed that you will be able to load non-DRM ePub books onto the iPad via iTunes syncing, in addition to being able to purchase DRM titles directly from Apple. This is great news for anyone who likes reading the classics, as sites like Feedbooks already have nearly all their titles up in Non-DRM ePub format. It’s also good news for booksellers who deal in non-DRM titles, as they will be compatible with Apple’s new “magical” device.
The second, and for my money, more interesting bit of info is that it looks like Apple is defaulting to allowing text-to-speech functionality, the same thing that got the Amazon Kindle into trouble with the Author’s Guild. According to the page linked above:
iBooks works with VoiceOver, the screen reader in iPad, so it can read you the contents of any page.
If I’m parsing this tiny bit of information properly, that sounds like iBook hooks into an OS level text-to-speech convertor, which means that the iPad may be a very capable device for the visually impared. I will be very, very interested to see whether the Apple VoiceOver technology is controlable at the individual book level, and whether publishers can choose to disable it for given books as they do for the Amazon Kindle.
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Comments
visually impaired & touch screen
Correct me if I’m wrong but they’ll also need to find a way around the touch screen if it is to be used by the visually impaired. With no tactile indications of the keys it will be a problem unless it reads the menu & responds to voice prompts.
multiple UI options
There are multiple UI options with the lack of physical keys on the iPad for visually impared users, the one that I think will happen is the "tooltip" interface, where the device speaks the name of the object after a long tap, similar to the pop-up textual tooltip you get if you hover the mouse over an object in a browser. There are other options, though, including the ability to actually give directions based on voice-input and touch. You can give voice commands to the iPhone…I don’t think it would be particularly difficult to do the same to the iPad ("Launch iBooks"), and if you combine voice input with the ability for the device to direct your finger (since the device will know where you are touching, it should be able to help nudge you in the right direction via voice) it could be very usable.