The Amazon Kindle Audio Adapter is a piece of hardware you can purchase for your Kindle Paperwhite, Voyage or Oasis. It plugs into the USB port of your device and in conjunction with a pair of headphones you can have everything read aloud. This is useful for navigating around the device, it tells you exactly what you are clicking on and e-books, which have a text to speech option.
This audio adapter can be used with headphones or an external speaker. It is primarily geared towards people with vision disorders, but still want to listen to ebooks. When the audio adapter is plugged in, you do not have to download any special software, it just works. When you click on the store, or your library you have to doubleclick, this ensures that you are not erroneously clicking on the wrong thing.
The ebook system is interesting. You can have a specific page read aloud or you can use two fingers and gesture on the screen to enable automatic page turn mode. As the first page is read aloud, the audio system will automatically turn the page to the next one and continue reading it aloud, with no pauses.
The Kindle Audio Adapter is a solid investment for someone in your life that has poor eyesight or is completely blind. It retails for 19.99 and is only available for purchase on the main Amazon.com website, it is not available for some reason internationally.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
