BARD Mobile

Bard mobile was at one time a great app for visually handicapped people. Now after the last few updates, nothing works with voice over on apple. Some things are impossible to click on, while other things have moved entirely. I’m no longer able to navigate and use this app on my own and now have to rely and depend on a seeing person to do it for me. At this point I might as well use any app since it no longer makes any difference for me.

I spend many hours every week in this app. On each screen: Good placement of controls for both swiping and touch. I've used BARD Mobile with VoiceOver for 10 years. I start books in other readers, but I spend so much time in BARD that I tend to use the other reader apps primarily to pinpoint particular phrases in text and add notes. I hardly ever use braille in BARD, partly because I use other apps for braille, but I just now discovered that my search format defaults to select audio, even though Show me Both audio and braille is selected in settings. I'll make more of an effort to search for all formats. I so very much appreciate BARD's stability; a new design is the last thing we want. I appreciate that updates generally seem either necessary or helpful. I miss the old search interface, so sometimes I go to the website and add titles to my wish list. The Recents list is very well done. I would love to have other lists that I could name/personalize (such as wind down, late night, and bookmarked (listing books I've bookmarked)). I'm getting used to using app shortcuts on the home screen, so maybe various lists (such as recents and customized) could be set as BARD shortcuts. Occasionally, there's a BARD system message, especially Re: occasional brief outages. I've always felt that these messages were very respectful and necessary. 2 confusing things: The message always repeats itself, so I have to hit ok twice, but I've never cared enough to mention it until now. Also, I'd like an easy way to find and reread the alert. The few times I've needed customer service, they were very responsive and on point. Thank you, BARD, for being such a wonderful part of my life!

I absolutely love this app! It's very simple to use and works well with voiceover. I highly recommend it to anyone who qualifies for this app because it so amazing. I know a lot of people may have had issues, but I have not. One of the things that I love is that you do not have to have internet to download books, which means you can download them straight to your phone, which makes things so much easier. So, thank you NLS for the development of this goeat app!

I love the app, but an equalizer feature would be nice, as well as a pitch shifter to raise or lower the pitch as well as more speed options. what does tone mean when listening to a book? is it possible to update the app to be compatible with iOS 17? this app is so fun and neat and amazing and awesome and cool and super and phenomenal. please don’t ever get rid of the book Breakthrough by Joyce Smith because it is an inspiring and true story. thank you so much for finally adding this book because I’ve been waiting to download it for a long time. it would be even more cool if you could set the speed to 0%. Please don’t ever get rid of this app because I love it so much and it’s so nice and handy and convenient. Thanks. I love how the books are read by actual humans who are expressive instead of text-to-speech. Now I can’t even adjust the tone of the book I am listening to like I used to be able to do. thanks so much for updating the app so that I can adjust the tone of the books again like I used to. Please keep the updates coming if possible. is it possible to update the app to be compatible with iOS 17.4.1? There’s nothing wrong with the app, but I was just wondering.

The most recent update of the Bard application is driving me crazy! The Siri commands responses are not consistent and in many cases, I need to go back to the screen on my iPhone in order to resolve command issues. The users manual has not been updated and I cannot find information that might be helpful in addressing the problems I have found. the shock bone induction headset I use response, inconsistently and many times. I cannot pause the book. I am reading when I want to respond to a person’s question. It is nice to be able to move between tone and speed on the app screen again. I know it has been a long time since the prior update, but I am hoping for a quick fix to the problems I am having.

I've been a listener of NLS books since way back when, and by that I mean I used to wait around for my box of cassette tapes to come in the mail so I could load my next books into a massive machine with a bunch of weird slider controls and switches. Now I can just download books into the app, and I must say I'm a huge fan. The audiobook library is truly massive, and the app is usually pretty reliable. The only thing holding me back from a 4 or 5 star review? Well, as a user of a lot of apple products, I often play my Bard books on my Homepod speaker through Airplay, and this is a very frustrating experience because the Bard app has yet to be updated to use the Airplay 2 standard. Without being too technicle, this means that using Airplay is a very sluggish and glitchy experience. I was hoping the recent update to the app would finally fix this, but unfortunately it did not. Bottom line, I love the massive library, and the app works well enough, but it doesn't work well with my set-up which is frustrating.

The button to change from speed adjustment to tone adjustment is not working.

Keep in mind, a signature from a doctor or healthcare professional is required before you get approval from the NLS. Here in my state the whole process only took about one week. When initially installing the BARD app it would be beneficial to have someone fully cited by your side to help you sign in. Having said that, the app and service exceeded all expectations! I know some users have experienced issues, but that wasn't my experience. Maybe it was a software bug that has since been resolved? nevertheless, as a voiceover user I found the app and controls very easy to navigate. The layout is very straight forward and intuitive. Searching, adding books to your wishlist, downloading, and deleting are simple to perform. This goes for using the audio player as well. In voiceover mode, one flick of the finger gives you all kinds of secondary options like more titles by that particular author or subject. I was very impressed with the amount of titles in the library, with new ones being added regularly. They may not have brand new releases, but they are as recent as six months to a year. I did a comparison to Apple books and found that BARD had about 2/3 of the titles of the former, at least the ones I was looking for. Lastly, the narrators are all top-notch with great voices and diction.

There is not an option to browse by genre or category which makes it challenging for my clients to find new books.

Since updating my iPhone 12 Pro Max's operating system to IOS 17.0.3 earlier this month, when I press any button in the app, I get a message stating that the login credentials cannot be decrypted. At one point it told me that there was no connection to the network. so while I can log into the BARD website, see my wishlist, previous downloads, and search the book collection, I can't do any of that in the app. It also doesn't allow me to download books because the same message always appears. I have already uninstalled and reinstalled the application, I have changed my password, I have restarted my iPhone, I have called Apple technical support, I have emailed nls, I have sent registry diagnostics, I have received recommendations. nothing works. I suspect the app needs updating to be fully compatible with IOS 17.0.3.