Accessibility Features Added to Standard Kindle Fire

December 6, 2012 — Amazon announced that early next year the accessibility features, “Voice Guide” and “Explore by Touch,” will be introduced to the standard definition Kindle Fire and Kindle Fire HD 7. The Voice Guide provides text-to-speech capabilities and reads aloud any action performed by the individual using the Kindle device. Also helpful to individuals with vision loss is Explore by Touch, which announces what item an individual touches, for example the title of a book, and if the item is tapped twice, it results in the default action (i.e. the book would open). Additional features aimed at increasing accessibility on Kindle devices include: text-to-speech; adjustable fonts; and modification of text color. Dave Limp, Vice President, Amazon Kindle, noted that Amazon  “[has] heard from thousands of customers who are vision-impaired that Kindle has made a difference in their lives”, thereby emphasizing the importance of the new accessibility features “so that our vision-impaired customers can have a better experience reading, communicating and consuming media.”