I was hoping this would be a way to listen to Wikipedia articles like audiobooks. Unfortunately, the iPhone screen reader is not optimized for reading Wikipedia:
- It reads footnote links ("one", "fourteen", etc)
- It reads years like numbers ("One thousand, seven hundred and fifty six" instead of "seventeen fifty six").
- It reads introductory metadata, warnings, etc.
- It reads tables.
- It read image captions.
Ideally it wouldn't do any of these things. Basically, it reads the screen from top to bottom, which isn't what a human would do if you asked somebody to read a Wikipedia article to you. If anyone knows a good way to synthesize Wikipedia to speech, that would be so nice!
EDIT: I wonder if Apple would reject such an app from the App Store because it would compete with ebooks.
> I wonder if Apple would reject such an app from the App Store because it would compete with ebooks.
They would not, unless you went out of your way to violate App Store guidelines. There are currently hundreds of iOS "reader" apps that allow users to consume ebooks[1], graphic novels, articles from Wikipedia and similar sites (i.e. wikiHow), etc.
- It reads footnote links ("one", "fourteen", etc)
- It reads years like numbers ("One thousand, seven hundred and fifty six" instead of "seventeen fifty six").
- It reads introductory metadata, warnings, etc.
- It reads tables.
- It read image captions.
Ideally it wouldn't do any of these things. Basically, it reads the screen from top to bottom, which isn't what a human would do if you asked somebody to read a Wikipedia article to you. If anyone knows a good way to synthesize Wikipedia to speech, that would be so nice!
EDIT: I wonder if Apple would reject such an app from the App Store because it would compete with ebooks.