Immersive Reading is a brilliant reading strategy for those with ADHD, and one that I rely on heavily myself. It helps me keep my attention on the line I am reading, and ensures that I have both a visual and auditory input for my book. It has revolutionary for me, allowing me to go from reading slumps to racing through books with ease.
However, despite its excellence as a reading strategy, the current tools available for it are lacklustre at best. Listening to an audiobook alongside a written version of the text can get incredibly confusing at times, and losing your place in an audiobook and becoming out of sync is a problem I have stumbled onto more than a handful of times. So, when Audible released its ‘Immersion Reading’ earlier this year, I felt cautious. I had once been a Kindle user myself, but ended up switching to Kobo and other eBook distributor services for a number of different accessibility reasons. However, for the sake of science, I dusted off my old Kindle to see what Amazon’s new feature could potentially offer to ADHD readers.
First problem – Immersion Reading is not available on Kindle.
At least, not Kindle e-readers. Personally, I invested in an e-reader back in 2022, as I knew that reading on a smartphone or tablet (or quite frankly any device with access to the rest of the internet) would not be ideal for me. I am a persistent doom-scroller, so I, like many other neurodiverse reader friends, knew that I would need a device dedicated to my reading. Which is why I was surprised that, despite being advertised as an ‘accessibility’ feature in Audible’s Help page, that Kindle’s own e-reader devices had not made the cut for the supported devices list. Currently, the feature is only available on Android & IOS for smartphones and tablets, newer versions of Amazon’s Fire Tablets, as well as MacOS for MacBooks and iMacs.
Nevertheless, I was doing this for science. There was no turning back now.
Instead, I re-downloaded the Audible app on my iPhone to give the Immersion Reading feature a go. Being a Windows user for my PC and laptop, along with not owning any sort of tablet, my iPhone 13 was unfortunately the largest screen I could read on. However, despite being on a small screen, I still got to experience a lot of features that felt like a more polished version of the immersive reading that I am used to.
First off, being able to listen to my audiobook and read my eBook on one device was amazing. Every e-reader I have had, whether it be my Kindle or Kobo, has been compatible with both eBooks and audiobooks, but never at the same time. Having one device that plays them both at the same time not only reduces the amount of devices I need to bring with me, but also keeps my space in the story synced across both versions. Instead of having to meticulously keep track of my timestamp and page number, my progress was synced across both the audiobook and eBook, regardless of whether I was listening to the audiobook on its own, or listening in tandem in Immersion Reading mode.
Another feature I really enjoyed was the Word Highlighter. as you are reading, the eBook highlights the word as it is being read out, and even turns to the next page automatically as the audiobook goes on. As I have mentioned before, I really struggle keeping on a line when I am reading, which is why I switched to the immersive reading strategy in the first place. This all felt like one step up from that – but I do worry that, for longer reading sessions, I would find not touching the page and interacting with the eBook to be something that ends up with me losing my engagement as I go on. So far however, I have found it really helpful for short-term public transport journeys, where I don’t want to hassle setting up my e-reader and audiobook.
However, while I have been really impressed with Amazon’s new Immersion feature so far, I can’t say I will be switching to this anytime soon. Reading on my phone is not my preferred experience, and even if I could use this feature on my old Kindle, this is a feature that only works if you have bought both the eBook and Audiobook through the Kindle and Audible stores. I often take my audiobooks and eBooks out through my local library, and when I am not, I buy them through services that allow me to download the files of the audiobooks themselves, so that I can use them on whatever devices I want. From a technology perspective, I can completely understand why this feature is only available on Amazon-purchased books, however I hope this is something that other companies can pick up and expand upon in the near future.
Overall, if you aren’t particularly worried about audiobook ownership, or you already have some sort of Audible subscription, I can see this being a great option for you or your child if you already own a compatible device. However, if you are someone who prefers to take their digital books out from their libraries through Libby, or just someone who prefers to shop elsewhere, it may be better to stick with what we’ve got, and hope for this kind of feature from other companies in the near future.
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