Thinking Out Loud Ep. 3

Audio Books ~ Sight impaired’ s ~ Calgon Take Me Away.

My mon has macular degeneration in both eyes. She’s been dealing with it for over 30 years now. (she’s 93).

One of her passions has always been reading. I’m guessing that with 4 kids it was a good way to get away from regular life. Travel the world, have adventure, just get away in her head.

Bard National Library of Congress has been a God send for her. It’s a free service to the hearing and sight impaired. You only need validation from your doctor to subscribe.

Here is the link: National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled Downloadable Books and Magazines (loc.gov)

You get a machine that plays the books. They can send you the cartridge's in the mail or like I do for my mom I down load them to a flash drive which can also be played on the machine. You have to down load the Bard Express to your computer to be able to down load them but then you have the whole library at your finger tips.

I just down loaded 12 more books for her. This way she gives me a list of her favorite authors and I search the library for them, down load and away she goes.

The books that are shipped in the mail (free shipping and return) can be random or you can specify authors that you like. They also send a book in the mail that you can choose from. Only problem there is that sometimes they send stuff she wasn’t interested in, me doing the down load makes it so she hears authors that she really likes.

She really enjoys being able to still follow her favorite authors when they have new books come out. Sometimes a may be a bit before the book goes to audio but still nice that they keep up and do newer books.

If you know anyone that has vision or hearing impairments and doesn’t have this service they should defiantly look into it.