Special Stories User Guide - Settings

Access the Settings

To find the settings, tap its Actions button at the top left in the main view, and then tap the Settings button. Using the Actions button also provides access to managing collections, printing, exporting and importing stories: these additional facilities are explained in Chapter 9.

Note: When you tap the Actions or menu button, you will have to open the Child Safety Gate in order to proceed. This is explained in more detail below.

Animation Speed

• Animation Speed

  This sets the speed at which pages are turned, if you set them to be turned automatically.

Advancing to Next Page

• Automatic

  Set Automatic to ON to make the next page in the story appear automatically, after the spoken words for the previous page have played (with a delay determined by the Animation Speed setting).

• Swipe Left or Right

Set Swipe Left or Right to ON to allow swiping to the left to turn to the next page, and swiping to the right to turn to the previous page.

Setting either of these to ON also hides the backward and forward arrow buttons on each page.

Appearance

• Theme

By default, Default is selected and will use the theme of your device, be that light or dark mode. If you would like to only change the appearance of Special Stories Plus, but keep the rest of your device the same, you can choose between Light or Dark in this setting. Tap which one you would like to use then Settings, and the app will display the new theme.

• Language

Default will automatically be selected within the app and will use the language your device is set to use. To switch between languages in Special Stories Plus, select the language you would like to use then tap Settings and the app's interface will change to use your desired language. Alternatively, to change the language for all apps, set a different language in your device's settings.

• Font

  You can change the font used to display the text in stories. By default, the Special Letters font included with Special Stories is used. The app also includes the OpenDyslexic font, designed to increase readability for users with dyslexia, and the and Inter font, which is also intended to be easy to read. You can also choose any other font that is provided as standard on the device.

  Additional font files you may have installed on the device will not be available to Special Stories. However, you can install font files into the app by using the + button at the top right in Settings > Font and selecting a .otf, .ttf or .woff file you have on your device, or by dragging one of these on to the Actions page (with Settings closed). It is not currently possible to use .woff2 files.

• Alignment

  By default, the text on each page in a story is centred under the picture, and this is usually the best option for single words or short phrases. However, if you are using longer sentences, you may prefer to have the text left-justified (or right-justified for languages that read right-to-left).

• Large Text

  This is ON by default, causing the text for each story's pages to be displayed in a large font size, suitable for those with early or limited reading skills or vision impairment. Turning it OFF uses a smaller font size, so that longer sentences will fit on each page. This setting applies to printing as well as on screen viewing. If there is too much text to fit on the screen, you can use 2 fingers or a mouse to scroll the text up and down, however the text that's not initially visible will not be visible at all on a paper printout or PDF copy of the story.

Using Sound

• Turning Pages

  When this is ON, the spoken words for each page are played when the page appears. Turn this OFF if you prefer to read the written words before hearing the sounds. If both this and Automatic are ON, all taps are ignored, and the pages are turned automatically, with the spoken words for each page played as soon as it is displayed.

• Tapping Pictures

  When this is ON, the spoken words for each page are played whenever the picture on the page is tapped. If you turn this OFF, tapping the picture will have no effect. If this and Automatic are both ON, but Turning Pages is OFF, then tapping the picture on a page plays the associated spoken words and then moves to the next page.

  If both Turning Pages and Tapping Pictures are OFF, but Automatic is ON, then all taps are ignored, the pages are turned automatically (with a delay determined by the Animation Speed setting), but no sounds are played.

The different combinations of the above 4 settings, and how you can use them, are summarised in the table below:

With Automatic set to ON, then if the Lock to Story padlock is closed (as explained in Chapter 4), the story goes back to the first page and starts again after the last page, otherwise it stops at the last page.

• Record New Sounds

  When this is ON, you can record spoken words for each new page you add. If you turn it OFF, the sound recording and play buttons don't appear, and you can only add the text and picture for each page. If you don't want to use sounds at all (e.g. for a child who is profoundly deaf), turn off all 3 sound settings. If you want sound on some pages but not others, leave this setting ON, and tap the No Sound button when adding a new page where you don't want sound.

• Text To Speech

  When this is ON, then the device's text-to-speech (TTS) engine will be used to synthesize audio for any pages with no recorded sound. This applies to pages that were added while Record New Sounds was OFF or using No Sound and to pages in imported stories that did not include sound. Refer to our FAQs for further information about sound, including TTS. This setting is on by default.

Other Options

• Enable Editing

  Turn this OFF to prevent accidental changes to all stories, especially if you have left your child to read on their own. This then disables editing and rearranging existing stories and adding new ones. It also disables most of the buttons in the Actions view.

• Paper Size

Special Stories Plus allows you to print stories. You can select from a range of commonly used paper sizes to print on. The font and text size are taken from the current settings. In your device's print dialogue make sure you set the same paper size.

Find out more about printing in Chapter 12.

• Child Safety Gate

The child safety gate (also sometimes called a parental gate, parental lock or parental control) is designed to protect children against navigating out of the app and visiting websites with unsuitable content, etc.

Whenever you tap the Actions button in the main page, you are required to enter the answer to a calculation to continue, for example:

  9 - 3 + 4 =

In this case, the answer would be 10. Note: The gate cannot prevent the child from leaving the app by pressing the device's home button and then opening another app. To lock the user temporarily into any app on iOS devices, we recommend making use of Apple's built-in Guided Access facility.

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