I love technology ♥
Wednesday, January 12th, 2011 10:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
afunaI am sitting in bed, listening to my portable mobile tablet read an ebook to me, while I knit. I don't need to look at the screen (which is good, because my eyes are tired. I'm at the point where I'm squinting at the screen, but not at the point where my head aches from the light), and I don't need to turn the pages (which is fantastic, because my hands are full of knitting).
I'd played with VoiceOver settings before, because I knew I'd want to try it out in case of headache / tiredness, but this is the first time that I've used VoiceOver in real world use, rather than just testing snippets here and there.
So far so good :)
One thing that held me back at first is that in general, I get more tired when listening than I do when reading. However, after fiddling with the settings, I found out that lowering the volume and speeding up the speaking rate (both of which were unintuitive steps to me) has helped reduce the weariness.
Reducing the volume reduces the feeling that I'm being shouted at, and lets me listen with less stress. And increasing the speaking rate increased my comprehension (do you know the studies that say that speed readers absorb more information than slow readers, because they take in things a block at a time rather than a word at a time? I suspect it's something like that. Or it may be because I'm less bored and my mind has less time to wander).
Anyway, yes, really glad that I have the tools that I have \o/ I love tech!
I'd played with VoiceOver settings before, because I knew I'd want to try it out in case of headache / tiredness, but this is the first time that I've used VoiceOver in real world use, rather than just testing snippets here and there.
So far so good :)
One thing that held me back at first is that in general, I get more tired when listening than I do when reading. However, after fiddling with the settings, I found out that lowering the volume and speeding up the speaking rate (both of which were unintuitive steps to me) has helped reduce the weariness.
Reducing the volume reduces the feeling that I'm being shouted at, and lets me listen with less stress. And increasing the speaking rate increased my comprehension (do you know the studies that say that speed readers absorb more information than slow readers, because they take in things a block at a time rather than a word at a time? I suspect it's something like that. Or it may be because I'm less bored and my mind has less time to wander).
Anyway, yes, really glad that I have the tools that I have \o/ I love tech!
no subject
Date: 2011-01-13 02:59 am (UTC)Comprehension is such a weird and odd thing. I use regular narrated audiobooks for most of my 'reading' because I find the computer difficult to understand, but I've discovered lately that when I'm tired putting the iPad on "half speed" (which pitch-shifts things back so it sounds the same pitch as regular speed) improves my comprehension greatly! I do find that low volume helps too, which is handy because when I'm tired I get more sensitive to sound.
no subject
Date: 2011-01-13 05:55 pm (UTC)So it might be that we end up in similar speed in absolute terms?