Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Narrator: The first thing to say about most tablets is that you can have them in portrait
or in landscape mode. This is a personal choice, but you can lock the rotation from the Settings
menu. We've got it landscape mode primarily because it fits our filming equipment better
but you can choose which way you have it. The Nook HD+ is based on Android as the operating
system so that you have access to things like the Play Store, and this means you can load
all kinds of apps including many eBook reading apps such as Kobo and the Kindle.
The Nook HD+ doesn't have the accessibility features that are incorporated in the latest
versions of Android, so for instance, there's no magnification which Android has system-wide
now. And although text-to-speech is mentioned in the Settings, there isn't any way (that
I've found anyway) that you can turn it on or off. So we're going to be concentrating
on the visual aspects of using the Nook HD+ as an eReader.
The way that you open a book: there is a library app onscreen and when you tap that you get
the books and magazines and films that you've previously purchased. And if I tap one of
those books it will open up into something called the reader app.
It comes up at a particular font size and shape and if I'm not happy with that I can
tap the middle of the screen and a menu appears near the bottom. One of the buttons on the
menu is an AA button which is pretty well now the standard way of suggesting that there
are font options to make. If I tap that button, the first thing to say is there's a Publisher
Default button at the bottom right -- if that is turned on then none of the other features
for changing the way that the text looks are available. So if that's on, the first thing
you might want to do is turn it off, and then all the other features that are available
on the screen are available to you. Along the top there's a series of letter As.
The one in the middle, near the middle, is a slightly different colour which shows that
that's the one that's currently in use. So for instance if I wanted large text I could
tap on the A at the far right and you might have been able to see that the text size changed
behind the font screen that I have up. Another setting that some people might like
is if you have a preference for a particular font or a particular font shape. Some people
like for instance serif fonts, other people like sans serif fonts, and you can choose
from a number of different fonts there to make the text a bit more legible.
I'll just come off that font setting now so that you can see the way that the book has
changed behind that font Settings option. So, I can now scroll through the book in the
usual way and read it at the font size of my choice.
There are a couple of other settings which you might want to change. The main one of
these is the "Theme" setting at the bottom right. There are six of these. Four of them
show you a different colour background and this could be useful if you have an issue
with glare. Many of these tablets have quite shiny screens and glare can be an issue. So
you can change the background colour or you can choose one of the two settings that actually
gives you white text on a dark background. The one I've got now is dark gray and there
doesn't seem to be a way to get it to being actually black. I know some people would like
a very black screen with white text. Essentially we have a choice between brown and dark gray.
Two other minor changes that you might want to consider are "Line Spacing" and "Margins".
You can scrunch the text up a little bit or you can make the gap between the different
lines larger. And in the same way you can choose to have larger or smaller margins.
And each of these, it's a trade-off between how much text you get on the screen and how
easy you find it to read. One last setting that it might be worth showing
is not actually found inside the reader app. If I come out of the reader app by pressing
the N button -- it's the only physical button on the front of the Nook HD+ - I can turn
on a voice setting by going to the main settings, all settings and then with "Applications"
chosen at the left I can tap on the "Reader" application and there is an option here called
"enable accessibility - currently in BETA". Beta basically means that is unfinished and
we're going to see what effect that has in a moment when we go into a book.
Now when I go back into my book through the library I should find that as I open it my
current location is spoken. Reader: Page eighty four of nine hundred forty
four Narrator: The volume isn't as loud as it could
be but there is a headphone socket on the machine so you could put a pair of headphones
or maybe even an external set of speakers on here if you wished to.
If I now tap the middle of the screen the voice will read what's on the screen and the
current sentence is highlighted. Because I have large font at the moment there is less
than one sentence on the screen. So let's see how it goes.
Reader: Entering auto mode. "Entering the neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of
the surrounding families, but he's considered as the rightful someone or other of their
daughters. My dear mister" Narrator: I can tap the screen again to pause
the speech. The screen flips to show the text that's being read, but because a whole sentence
is highlighted at any one time, it only changes when the highlight changes. And so again you
might have noticed that when it was reading the first sentence, it read quite a lot of
the text that was on this screen before it actually flipped to this screen.
With the speech turned on I can tap and hold the middle of the screen...
Reader: Entering menu mode. Menu table of contents
Narrator: And it brings up a little menu. It doesn't read it very well - what it said
then was "entering menu table of contents." I can now flick up and down the screen to
move through this menu. Reader: Menu go to bookmarks. Menu speech
rate. Narrator: And on one of these, for instance
"menu speech rate" I can double tap to start making a change to the rate of the speech.
Reader: Fling up and down to select a value. Narrator: What it said then was "fling up
or down to select the value". These are things that I call swipes, some people call them
flicks, but Nook's decided to call them flings. But as I swipe up the screen the speed of
the voice will change. Reader: Speech rate changed.
Narrator: In most cases where you have a voice like this, it would give you some value. It
might have said "speech rate 10" or 12. This doesn't but you might be able to hear if I
swipe up a few times that it is actually getting a little bit faster.
Reader: Speech rate, Speech rate, Speech rate changed
Narrator: I'll just tap the screen once more and it'll start reading.
Reader: Entering auto mode. "Bennett" said his lady to him one day "have you heard that
Netherfield Park is let at last Narrator: This speech now should be available
for any book that's opened, as well as the font and size settings which I've chosen should
be available for any other book that I open. It is notable that many books that you can
get on the Nook HD+ don't actually work with speech. Annoyingly, the Nook HD+ manual - the
quick user guide and the user guide - neither of these work with the speech. And a couple
of other books that I've tried, when I try turning on the speech, they just give a "click"
sound and the book closes. This shows the limitations of the voice; I don't think this
is designed for someone who can't see the screen, but it might be useful for someone
who wants a bit of assistance with using the screen, and we can only hope that in later
versions of the Nook HD+, these kinds of limitations are overcome.
I hope you found this very short introduction to the Nook HD+ as a eBook reader useful.