Accessibility and screen readers

Using Zen Reader with TalkBack, a keyboard, larger text or a calmer colour theme.

Zen Reader is built to be usable without a mouse or a finger on every word, and with a screen reader on Android. This page says what works today, and just as plainly what has not been checked yet.

TalkBack on Android

With TalkBack turned on, Zen Reader reads:

• The text on every screen, once each — headings, paragraphs, list rows and the words beside a switch. Section headings are announced as headings, so TalkBack's heading navigation jumps between them.
• Every button by what it does, including the ones that show only an icon — Hear the book text read correctly rather than "button".
• A drop-down's current choice as well as its name — "Language, English" rather than just "Language" — and double-tapping it opens the list.
• Every dialog's title as a heading, then its message, including longer dialogs such as the AI-permission sheet, Restore your library, and Before we listen when the app is about to ask for the microphone.
• Banners across the top of a screen — a trial ending, a new term's lists, an error — with their title and message.
• Notifications as one item each, "title, time", followed by the message — not the same words twice.

The extra work only happens while TalkBack is on, so it costs nothing for anyone who does not use it. If you turn TalkBack on while Zen Reader is already open, the screen you are on is named straight away.

Keyboard

On Windows and on a Mac, buttons, switches and lists can be reached with Tab and pressed with Enter or Space. So can these, which look like text or pictures rather than buttons:

• the characters on the reading screen, and the cells of a reading report;
• the tap-to-hear words on spelling, word list and report screens;
• photo and handwriting tiles — a spelling sheet, a word's window, a school-test photo.

A long row of these is one stop for Tab; use the arrow keys to move along it, so you do not have to tab through every character on a page to get past it.

Text size

There is no app-wide text-size setting yet. On the Reading screen, Type size makes the book's text larger or smaller for that reader, and the Book Editor has its own larger and smaller buttons for the page you are editing. On a Mac the whole app is drawn a little larger than on Windows, to match the Mac's own text.

Colour and contrast

Settings → Colour theme changes the whole app, not just the reading page. Match my device follows your system's light or dark setting; Night Ink, Deep Sea and Galaxy are dark; Plain Grey is deliberately plain, for anyone who finds the brighter themes distracting. On Android the status bar and navigation bar take the theme's colour too, so their icons stay readable in dark mode. See Settings.

What has not been checked

We say this rather than let you find out:

• TalkBack has been measured screen by screen on Settings, and the rest of the app uses the same mechanism, checked by automated tests on every build. Not every screen has had a person listen to it end to end.
• VoiceOver on iPhone, iPad and Mac, and Narrator on Windows, have not had a full pass. Buttons and controls carry the same names there, but we have not confirmed how each screen reads.
• A few small things are pointer-first by design and have a named button beside them that does the same job — the big word on a flash card, for instance, has Listen next to it.

If something does not read or cannot be reached, tell us at support@zenreader.co with the screen and the device — and the version from Settings → About.