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Release note

Preliminary – webReader June 2023 (v 3.8.0)

These are the preliminary release notes for the June 2023 minor release.

Planned release window: 2023-06-12 – 2023-06-16


New Features and Changes

Voice Names

Starting this release, we will display the actual voice names. This means that, if you have the voice selector enabled, your users might see “English (US) – Sophie” instead of “English (US)”. #6434, #6831


Audio Plays on Mobile by Default

webReader audio will play audibly by default on mobile devices, even when they are in silent mode. This change was introduced as an opt-in in the February 2023 release, but will be on by default from now on. #6844


Prevent webReader from Processing Certain Content

Customers are now able to instruct webReader to not process certain content at all, using a special CSS class, .rs_do_not_process. This is useful for content that should not be sent over the internet, like medical information. #7132


New Translation Languages

The following translation languages have been added for customers using DeepL, #6907:

  • Korean
  • Norwegian

Mobile Player on iPad OS

iPad users will be presented with the mobile version of the webReader player. This is because the mobile UI is made specifically for touch screens, and some desktop features may be difficult to use without a pointing device.


Notable Corrections

Accessibility Corrections

We have fixed a number of reported accessibility issues. #7022, #7027


Dictionary Fails when webReader has not Finished Loading

This issue caused the dictionary to fail on the first attempt, if webReader had not finished loading, while subsequent lookups worked. It’s now been addressed. #7215


No-button Implementations Break

When there was no Listen button on the page, it was not possible to start webReader programmatically. This has now been fixed. #7160


webReader requires the use of anchor elements

A certain part of the Listen button was required to be an anchor element, but this has now been changed so that webReader is agnostic about what type of element is used. #7032