AppDevel

Q: VoiceOver Pronunciation

Hello, I am using VoiceOver to read ebooks. I am vision impaired and VoiceOver makes all books available to me, not just audio books. It is an awesome feature! But.....

 

VO often speaks words as a mix of syllable and letter, not the whole word. For example, "something" may be pronounced as "something", or "some tee hing" or "somethin gee", or even "ess omething". "Came" may be "came", or it could be "cee ame". "The" at the beginning of a sentence is usually "Tee he", and "He" to start a sentance is usually two words "ech ee". VO is a great feature, but listening to a book this way is very challenging.


I have been searching but so far am not able to find any online discussion of this. I'm using an iPad Air with IOS 8.1, but have had the same issue as far back as IOS7, and also on an iPad 2. The behavior is the same with the default dialect, Enhanced Quality, and Alex voice options. It is worse when there is no internet connection, but it still happens with there is internet. I have even reset the iPad to original settings to make sure a custom change didn't cause it.

 

Is this standard behavior for VO, or is it a real bug? What can be done to fix it?


Only recently have I been using VO frequently, so only now am I trying to find the answer.  Greatly appreciate any assistance in solving this.

Posted on Oct 22, 2014 6:58 PM