The National Library Service (NLS) provides free audio book players and audio books and magazines to people who are blind or print handicapped (cannot handle a printed book). This includes nearly all quadriplegics.
The original audio book players provided only play cassette tapes. There is now a new fantastic digital player that plays digital cassettes or digital books downloaded to a thumb drive. Unfortunately, there are a limited number of the digital cassettes available for checkout, but you can download selections from an unbelievably huge digital library of commercial books and magazines from the National Library Service's BARD site. To obtain a free digital audio book player (don't even waste your time with the older cassette player) you will need to visit your local or regional library that supports the NLS Talking Book Program and complete an application. I think there is also a form for your M.D. verifying your disability. You may have to wait several months for a player. Mine took 3-6 months to arrive. Once you get your player and it is registered in the system, your Talking Book Librarian can get you an account on the NLS BARD site for downloading books and magazines to play on your digital audio book player. The processes fairly simple. You go to the BARD site and search for and select the book you want, download it to your computer (it will be in a zip file), extract all the files from the zip file, copy them to a thumb drive, then insert the thumb drive into the digital audio book player and you are ready to start listening. The controls on the digital audio book player are easy to use. Starting and stopping are done with the same large button. You can fast forward or rewind in increments of seconds, minutes or chapters. You can speed up or slow down the narration without changing pitch. There is a sleep button that shuts your player off in selected increments of 15 minutes. The battery when charged will last up to 29 hours. The sound is crystal clear and there is a broad range of volume settings. I am a huge fan of this player and NLS Talking Book program and I think you will be too. Steve - C4, 22 years
