Amazon has announced several new features for the Amazon Kindle iOS app aimed at making the digital experience easier for blind and visually impaired users.

Amazon said that the iOS Kindle update will make it easier for blind and visually impaired users to interact with features like "X-Ray, End Actions, sharing, highlighting and bookmarking," according to Tech Crunch.

In today's announcement, the company said that the new features will give visually impaired users easier access to the 1.8 million titles in the Kindle catalog that feature its text-to-voice VoiceOver narration, which allows users to interact with their devices when they can't see the screen. The app for iOS allows users to read character-by-character, word-by-word, and line-by-line.

Dorothy Nicholls, vice president of Amazon Kindle, said in a statement, "We're excited to introduce these new features to our Kindle for iOS app, making it easier than ever for our blind and visually impaired customers to access the vast selection of over 1.8 million books in the Kindle Store on their iPhone or iPad."

Amazon has made it a point to make its Kindle apps more accessible to the visually impaired. Last December, the company added Explore by Touch and Voice Guide to the Kindle Fire HD.

Despite its efforts, Amazon has been criticized for not doing enough for visually impaired users. In December, blind users protested in front of the company's headquarters to raise awareness of Kindle's lack of features for the visually impaired.

Dr. Marc Maurer, president of the National Federation of the Blind, stated, "Amazon has repeatedly demonstrated utter indifference to the recommendations of blind Americans for full accessibility of its Kindle e-books and failed to follow the best practices of other e-book providers."

The latest update by Amazon is, at least, a step in the right direction.

Blind and visually impaired users, with the new update, should be able to navigate within their library, sort their collection, search within books, and skip to a specific page within the book much more easily, according to PC Magazine.

"I found the functionalities to my liking and above my initial expectations. Frankly, due to continued vision loss and vision changes, I haven't read very much at all. Now I've read more books in the past few weeks than in the last five years," said Kevin Daniel, senior director of strategic recruiting for 'Lighthouse for the Blind' in the Amazon announcement.

The new Kindle features are available on iOS today, and Amazon plans to make the updates available for other mobile platforms soon. The updated Kindle app is available to download  in the iOS App Store.