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Re: eBook Readers with NVDA

JM Casey
 

Edge can probably read epub files with a plugin,b ut not natively. I've tried a few plugins for both chromium and firefox and there seem to be accessibility issues with many of them. I just use various tools to convert to .txt file for the most part. Qread can do this but it scrambles character encoding sometimes, rending things like quotation marks and accents a whole lot of nonsense characters on my braille display.

-----Original Message-----
From: nvda@nvda.groups.io <nvda@nvda.groups.io> On Behalf Of John Isige
Sent: December 2, 2021 12:13 PM
To: nvda@nvda.groups.io
Subject: Re: [nvda] eBook Readers with NVDA

I use QRead myself, but lots of people don't like it because the author will abandon things for long periods of time. Still, for me, it works pretty well, I haven't found another program that reads all of the formats it does. But you do have other options. Edge can read .EPUB files, I'm pretty sure, and lots of things can read PDFs nowadays, most browsers for example. If they won't come up as text you'll have to OCR them with something anyway, in order to read them.


I've never gotten Calibre to do much of anything. Personally I wouldn't restrict myself to something like the iPhone, not only because I don't own one, but also because then you're stuck with whatever Apple has.
There are lots of books that aren't in Apple's format.


Another option you didn't mention is Kindle for PC. This is accessible and works well with NVDA, so much so that I signed up for Kindle unlimited. There's also Bookshare, and NLS if you're in the US, or whatever library service you've got in your country, in case you're not hooked up with something like that.


On 12/2/2021 11:05 AM, David Russell wrote:
Hello NVDA,
This post is about eBook accessibility options with NVDA.
Please comment on which may be the best alternative for one without
vision, using NVDA to work with an acquired eBook reader?
1. QRead, is a pay-for product, designed by a blind user, Chris Toth.
2. Calibre Reader, formerly used by the customer service rep at my
regional Library Service for the Blind. However, she is sighted. She
could not offer specifics. Her blind colleague has limited experience
or knowledge concerning this issue.
3. Forego the first two options, purchase eBooks from Apple Bookstore
and read on iPhone.
4. Get a paid subscription to use Scribde with NVDA screen reader.

Previously, I have published and purchased a couple other books on
SmashWords. However, authors are opting for less readily accessible
means (Adobe PDF, TXT, or HTML) for one who purchases and read titles.
More so, formats becoming standard are Moby and or ePub. Hence, this
requires one to have an eBook reader.

Thanks for comment(s) in advance.
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