Audible Changes will affect Blind readers. Please can you help?

[deddajay]

This is an important topic for me as my husband lost his sight following a brain injury 20 years ago. Audiobooks gave him something to live for in the early days, (thank you, Terry Pratchett), and over the years we've used a lot of different devices to enable him to enjoy his audiobooks, most of which are now obsolete.

A substantial number of blind people worldwide now use a portable reading device made by Human Ware, called a Victor Reader. It used to be able to be registered with Audible's software to allow Audible books to be downloaded onto it, but the Audible Sync for new registrations has been broken for some time. Human Ware are about to bring out an updated version of the Victor Reader, but it appears Audible have no intention of updating their support for this device. This will prevent blind readers from accessing Audible books on their preferred reader, which is fully accessible and easy to use.

Given that the original intention of audiobooks was to allow those with no vision to be able to access books, this seems both heartless and unnecessary, and will cause even further isolation and difficulties for blind people to access books easily, on a device suitable and accessible for them, particularly the elderly who may be digitally challenged, or those like my husband who have limited fine motor control, but can use the large keys on this reader.

I would be really grateful if you could add your support to the open letter that has been sent to Audible asking them to continue supporting the Victor Reader. The letter, which also provides a lot more detail, can be found here:

https://openletter.earth/to-amazons-...unity-c26fcf78

Thank you for reading, and for all those adding their support, many thanks.