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How I built an audio book reader for my nearly blind grandfather

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Re: How I built an audio book reader for my nearly blind grandfather

#31

Post by yeukhon »

jnardiello wrote: post #28

Simply a great project with an astonishing outcome. The thing you did great is "UX" - or, to be more precise, lack of ux. You made a device which is perfectly accessible by your grandfather, asking him to deal with "modern" devices like smartphones would have probably resulted in an epic fail. Great work.

I think the main reason for the success is that it's simple to use. All the hard technical work getting books and getting things fixed and updated are done by the grandsons. This is good because now the grandsons really have a reason to visit (OP doesn't even need to come up with a reason and I respect that, but in some other people's cases they simply need A REASON to do so).

It is a win-win situation.

Re: How I built an audio book reader for my nearly blind grandfather

#34

Post by justboxing »

Amazing story, great Product! You grandfather is giving you realtime feedback (ex: his request for a music player).

Most projects on Kickstarter and Indiegogo don't even have a fully functioning product, whereas, you already have your product and your 1st customer, so why don't you take this product to the next level, and sell it to the wider audience of blind people?

You will have a tremendous impact on society doing good, and make a decent side-income at the same time.

Re: How I built an audio book reader for my nearly blind grandfather

#35

Post by mwcampbell »

Using RFID-tagged physical objects to represent the audiobooks is an interesting twist. Why did you decide to do that rather than add "next book" and "previous book" buttons, and use text-to-speech (or even pre-recorded audio files) to tell him which book is currently selected? After all, your approach increases the amount of maintenance your brother has to do, and makes the whole assembly a lot bigger.

EDIT: I'm also curious about which products you looked at and why you rejected them. For example, did you look at any dedicated talking book players, such as the Victor Reader Stream or the BookSense?

Re: How I built an audio book reader for my nearly blind grandfather

#36

Post by wkjagt »

mwcampbell wrote: post #35

Using RFID-tagged physical objects to represent the audiobooks is an interesting twist. Why did you decide to do that rather than add "next book" and "previous book" buttons, and use text-to-speech (or even pre-recorded audio files) to tell him which book is currently selected? After all, your approach increases the amount of maintenance your brother has to do, and makes the whole assembly a lot bigger. EDIT: I'm als…

That's a valid question. I wanted him to have physical, tangible books. A reader like the Victor Reader is, for someone who doesn't use technology, a mysterious box where the books are hidden behind buttons. I was afraid that this type of solution would discourage him. I may be wrong, but the impression I got from the existing products was they had a learning curve that my grandfather, at his age, wasn't willing to take. With his current reader, his books are actually book sized. He can have a pile of books he finished reading. There's something more "real" about it.

It doesn't actually require a lot more maintenance, except putting the titles on the "books". Other than that, we keep reusing the same cards.

Re: How I built an audio book reader for my nearly blind grandfather

#38

Post by wkjagt »

DanBC wrote: post #22

Fascinating! Have you seen the Kibano DigiPlayer devices? http://www.kibano.com/digiplayer.html

Wow, I hadn't seen them. I like that it uses a card per book. It makes each book a separate "entity". Plus they look really nice and easy to use. The FM transmitter is a great idea.

Re: How I built an audio book reader for my nearly blind grandfather

#39

Post by smeggy »

lesterbuck wrote: post #19

My father is age 92, and in 2001 he lost his central vision to macular degeneration. He wrote long documents on his PC before, but afterward he never had much dedication to figuring out how to use a computer with assistive software for the blind (or more lately, smart phones in assistive mode). Thus we entered a years long search for usable CD and MP3 players. Most devices have tiny uniform buttons and depend on LCD…

My grandmother was diagnosed with macular degeneration in the mid 90's. As time went on it became impossible for her to read books, which had previously been one of her favorite hobbies. Fortunately the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped (NLS) was there to fill that gap. So for the past 15 years or so she's had a selection of books mailed to her on a regular basis. It's a fantastic program.

I was excited to see the new digital book player when it came out. Now that she has essentially lost her vision completely and also suffers from hearing loss she's found the new player to be easier to use and have better audio clarity. The fact that you can also download the books through the BARD service was great too since I could sit with her and read her descriptions of the books rather than just depending on the random selection that the NLS sends you.

Re: How I built an audio book reader for my nearly blind grandfather

#40

Post by jankins »

I see it's already been mentioned here, but the best commercial version of this is called the Victor Reader Stream, made by Humanware. It has few buttons and simple enough navigation for non-technical people to use. Also relevant is NLS[0] and Bookshare[1]

[0] http://www.loc.gov/nls/ [1] https://www.bookshare.org/

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