Amazon Kindle App for iOS Updated with New Accessibility Features for Blind and Visually Impaired Customers

Today, Amazon has updated their Kindle reading app for iOS, bringing new accessibility features to blind and visually impaired customers. According to the press release, these enhancements will be available on additional platforms in the future.

“We’re excited to introduce these new features to our Kindle for iOS app, making it easier than ever for our blind and visually impaired customers to access the vast selection of over 1.8 million books in the Kindle Store on their iPhone or iPad,” said Dorothy Nicholls, Vice President, Amazon Kindle. “With this update, we’re also making customer-favorite features—such as X-Ray, End Actions, sharing, highlighting and bookmarking—more accessible. We look forward to continuing to develop and extend our accessibility features on Kindle Fire and our other Kindle apps.”

Here is a list of the new accessibility features of the Kindle app:

• Read aloud over 1.8 million titles available in the Kindle Store using Apple’s VoiceOver technology. Over 300,000 of these books are exclusive to the Kindle Store. Over 900,000 books are less than $4.99; over 1.5 million are less than $9.99.

• Seamlessly navigate within their library or within a book, with consistent title, menu and button names; navigate to a specific page within a book and sort books in the library by author or title.

• Read character-by-character, word-by-word, line-by-line, or continuously, as well as move forward or backward in the text.

• Search for a book within their library or search within their book and navigate to specific text.

• Add and delete notes, bookmarks, and highlights.

• Use customer-favorite features like X-Ray, End Actions and sharing on Facebook and Twitter.

• Look up words in the dictionary and Wikipedia.

• Customize the reading experience including changing the font, text size, background color, margin, and brightness.

• Use iOS accessibility features like Zoom, Assistive Touch, and Stereo to Mono, as well as peripheral braille displays.

Users  can gain these new accessibility features by downloading the new Kindle for iOS app for free from the App Store on iPad, iPhone or iPod touch or at http://www.itunes.com/appstore.