In 1952 a new product was developed that completely changed the education of the blind forever. A small publishing company in England published the first audio book for the sight impaired. What followed was a booming market that increased the availability and ease of use of these recordings.
Audio books for the blind have given people with vision difficulties the freedom to read whenever and wherever they wish. Before audio books a blind person was required to either carry heavy Braille books around with them or have a reading partner. As you can imagine these constraints severely limited the amount of time they were able to devote to reading.
Many studies are available detailing the benefits of audio books.
As for reading partners, it was discovered that many partners were not sufficiently educated to understand the grammar of what they were reading and unable to pronounce many words. The reading partner process was a slow one and there were many distractions. Add to these problems the necessity of finding a partner in the first place and you have a very negative and stressful learning environment. Many students fell behind in courses, became discouraged, and quit altogether.
Enter the audio book. With this one technological advancement all of the negative aspects of learning for the blind were wiped away. There was no longer a need to depend of someone else to read to you. Distractions could be avoided by adding headphones to your listening device. And the audio book market continues to grow.
Audio books are available in different formats to suit your needs. You can easily find recordings on CDs or MP3s. They are affordable, some are even free. Libraries carry them for loan and the internet makes subscription service available.
Audio books have become available in every genre allowing the blind to read for educational purposes and for enjoyment.
The newest moves in the realm of audio books are tables and graphs. Publishing companies are trying various methods of presenting tables and graphs without the use of Braille. This has been a difficult process but more than one publishing company feels that there will be a breakthrough in the next year.
This will only increase the existing material for the blind.
Rarely do new items create so many opportunities for people. The benefits of audio books for the blind have done just that. A new world was opened for the blind and they were able to gain independence beyond measure.
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My name is Richard Coppin and I am a webmaster - Why not take a look at our sites. audio books for the blind and online video technology
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