How to get your device to read your iBooks to you in iOS 7

Even people who love reading books all of the time will sometimes get too busy to sit down on the couch and spend a few hours with their nose in their favorite novel. Sometimes, running around, baking cookies, knitting sweaters, and exercising gets in the way of quality reading time.

You could invest money and digital storage space into downloading audio books from iTunes or a third-party digital audio book supplier. Or, you could just get your device to read to you using the iOS accessibility feature, VoiceOver…

Using VoiceOver in iBooks can be a bit tricky. The gestures that you are used to using on your iPhone or iPad don’t work and you have to practice using single, double, or triple tapping with one, two, three, or four fingers to move around in your mobile operating system. We’ve got some simple tips and tricks to help you navigate iBooks with VoiceOver activated so you can have your favorite books read to you while your hands are busy doing other things.

As a reminder, this is one of our more basic tutorials. Many of our readers have already figured out how to activate and use VoiceOver. We don’t pretend to assume that you are all still learning how to use Apple’s Accessibility features. This article is for our new readers. Every day, a new iOS user enters the community and is looking for help to guide them through all of their device’s amazing features. If you already know how to use VoiceOver, please feel free to skip this article and move onto something else. We aren’t having a “slow news day.” We just want to include readers with all different levels of technical expertise.

To have your device read to you, you must first activate Apple’s built in screen reader, VoiceOver. This feature reads aloud anything you touch. To select an item, single tap it. VoiceOver will read what the item is (an app’s name, for example). It will also let you know if you are in landscape or portrait mode and offers a number of different advantages for the sight impaired. Today, we are going to tell you how to turn it on and use it in iBooks.

Turning on VoiceOver

 

Step 1: Settings > General > Accessibility.

Step 2: Toggle the VoiceOver switch to on.

Step 3: Adjust the speaking rate by dragging the speed range toward the turtle for slower or the rabbit for faster.

Step 4: Tap “Accessibility” at the top of the screen. Then, double-tap it to go back.

Step 5: Scroll down to “Accessibility Shortcut” using three fingers to scroll.

Step 6: Select Accessibility Shortcut. Then double-tap it.

Step 7: Select VoiceOver. This allows you to triple-click the Home button to turn on and off VoiceOver so you don’t have to keep going back to the Settings app each time.

Using VoiceOver in iBooks

 

Step 1: Triple-click the Home button to turn off VoiceOver. Until you have had some practice with the feature, you should probably just leave it off. There are a lot of different functions and gestures

Step 2: Go to iBooks > [Book Title] > Bookmark icon or last page you left off reading.

Step 3: Triple-click the Home button to turn on VoiceOver.

Step 4: Single-tap the body of the page (the words of the book) with one finger to select it.

Step 5: Swipe downward with two fingers on the screen to activate VoiceOver.

Once VoiceOver is activated, the words will be read to you and the pages will even turn automatically when the time is right.

To stop the reading, single-tap the screen with two fingers. Triple-click the Home button to turn off VoiceOver.

Now you know how to turn get your device to read to you so that you can free your hands and eyes for more important tasks, like driving or making dinner.

Have you ever used the VoiceOver feature on your iPhone or iPad? Do you use it to read books to you?