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iBooks Text To Speech bug or annoying feature

This is for iBooks 4.2 with iOS 8.3:

using VoiceOver (or the Speak option with selected text) to read any iBook with mathematical symbols, is an annoying experience, because it converts those symbols to Chinese words.

I have tested Amazon's Kindle app, and the math symbols are properly read, at least it uses the unicode name for the symbol instead (like ∈ or ⊃)

is there any setting or configuration to adjust the language read ?

many excellent mathematics textbooks would be honored if iBooks can improve the accessibility capabilities

thanks in advance

iPad (3rd gen) Wi-Fi, iOS 8.3

Posted on May 21, 2015 8:21 PM

Reply
8 replies

May 27, 2015 4:14 PM in response to exandri

Hi, exandri!


I have a guess: your book isn't properly coded!

When creating a book, you always set a the language for the whole publication. But you can also set the language for small runs of text: a sentence, an expression, or even a word.

For example:


<html lang="en-US" xml:lang="en-US">

<p>This is a sentence in English. Now, <em lang="it" xml:lang="fr">en passant</em>, I introduced a french expression!</p>

</html>


Aside the technical explanation, you can override this in a very simple way:


- Open your book and activate Voice Over;

- Set the rotor to LANGUAGE (How: put two fingers in the screen. Then, with one finger pinned to a point, slide the other one. Stop when you reach the language option.)

- Now, pass your finger up/down until you hear ENGLISH.

- Voice Over now will solely use English to render the book (until you close it).

May 28, 2015 3:07 PM in response to thiago.eec

Hi, thiago.eec,

My settings have English as the only language for VoiceOver, and as I mentioned in the original post VoiceOver works fine with Kindle app, so I don't think is a VoiceOver issue, but an iBooks bug, related with a wrong rendering of the characters of mathematical symbols (VoiceOver reads ordinary text in perfect English in iBooks, but when it has to read formulas it changes automatically to chinese to "speak" the mathematical symbols )

Jun 4, 2015 2:53 AM in response to exandri

Hi, exandri.


I'm a bit confused here. You said your only language in VoiceOver is English, nontheless, you are getting content being rendered in Chinese. That doesn't seems right.

Look, if you are setting VoiceOver DEFAULT LANGUAGE* to English, know that this alone won't prevent content from being rendered in another language, when marked up in the code.

The only way to override the code mark up is to define the language within the book, like I explained above (with the Rotor).


About the Kindle app, you must know that VoiceOver is a screen reader. It reads what is presented on the screen. Only with some apps, it will have access to a deeper level of the text (the html code). Maybe, VoiceOver is not accessing the code while reading in the Kindle app, thats why it only uses english to read your book.


*(Settings > General > Accessibility > VoiceOver > Speech > Default Dialect)

Jun 4, 2015 9:52 AM in response to thiago.eec

Hi, thiago.eec

Thanks for your interest and support. I tested selecting language with the rotor dial as you explained, but nothing happens when i select the language option (I don't reach the point to select ENGLISH from there) .

Anyway to make my point clear (and to correct my original post), I cannot reproduce the "chinese" reading in VoiceOver with iBooks, (the reading of mathematical texts with symbols and formulas is good enough, exactly in the same way as in the Kindle app).

But the issue is still there when VoiceOver is OFF, and whenever I choose the "Speak..." option that appears in the menu after selecting text: automatically shows a new menu with two (or more languages), like the one shown below)User uploaded file

Jun 5, 2015 10:15 PM in response to thiago.eec

hi thiago.eec,

the books are copyrighted, but I just discovered that it isn't an iBooks issue (so this discussion should be moved out from this forum), but a "Speak Selection" bug instead ( or , at least a wrong configuration in my iPad): selecting text in a webpage with mathematical formulas (like

"http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/set-theory/ZF.html ") speaks in Korean (as you suggested , I can't tell the difference).

Please let me know if you can reproduce this in another iPad

iBooks Text To Speech bug or annoying feature

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