Books for Blind go Digital
Detroit Free Press
Aug 31, 2009
Jared Stofflett has been listening to books on audiotape since he was 5 years old.
He was born with a vision impairment that allows him to tell sunshine from darkness, but not much else. Those audiobooks taught him enough to make him a senior at Michigan State University, studying telecommunications.
"He reads a lot of books," said his father, John Stofflett.
Reading is about to get easier with the distribution of new digital reading devices for blind and visually impaired people. Funded by federal grants, the devices work like iPods and will replace old, 1970s-era tape recorders that have been the staple of libraries for visually impaired people for decades. The buttons to operate the machine have Braille labels, so Stofflett and others can use them easily.
The digital devices are a leap forward for blind people, said Laura Mancini, director of the Oakland County Library and its Library for the Visually and Physically Impaired. Because compact discs are smooth on both sides, they were a poor technology for blind people. They stuck with tapes long after most people moved on to new technology.
"A lot of people assume that the visually impaired can't participate in the digital age, but they can," Mancini said.
The government began distributing the machines this month. Library patrons will be able to pick them up, but first, federal authorities are sending them to blind veterans and centenarians who are registered for audiobooks.
"The training is embedded in the machine," said Maria Danna, supervisor of the Library for the Visually and Physically Impaired. It stocks more than 68,000 titles on tape or digital recordings for approximately 3,000 users.
Stofflett, 24, said digital players have many advantages over tapes, like their size and ability to fast forward quickly and double the playback speed -- the way he prefers to read.
"On a tape recorder, it sounds like Alvin and the Chipmunks," Stofflett said.
----
Sound Off...What do you think? Join the discussion
Copyright 2009 by Detroit Free Press
