Last night as I watched the news, there was an item announcing that Annette, the last of the famous Dionne quintuplets had passed away. I was interested on two counts. The story of their 1934 birth was the subject of widespread publicity. The turn of events that followed was also the subject of national curiosity. Amidst much controversy, the Ontario Government made the unprecedented decision to “rescue” the quints from their birth parents. The reason given was that the parents were poor and unable to give the girls the benefits that the government could. Later in their lives, the girls sued the government claiming that they had not been rescued but rather kidnapped. They won the lawsuit. I don’t have all the details down pat any more, but I remember the gist of the story, as it was the topic for the first audio book I ever listened to.
That audio book was a gift from the CNIB Library and was recorded onto a series of cassette tapes. The tapes were sent by post from the CNIB Library in Toronto. They were cumbersome but also easy to operate. You simply plugged them into your own cassette machine and pressed play. This was back in the late 1980’s. This was my introduction to audio books. Prior to this audio books had been played onto 78 RPM records.
The next innovation came from the library in the 1990’s when books were recorded onto CD’s using a digital access or DAISY recording system. To listen to the CDs, you needed a special player. One book could be recorded onto several CDs. The advantage was a stop/play button. If you needed to stop listening to a recording mid-stream, you could press that stop button and continue again when it was more convenient. I liked the system and again, the books were sent free through Canada Post.
Moving along with a rapidly advancing technology, the next audio book came with a complete book recorded onto a single CD.I still find it quite amazing to think of all those pages recorded onto one little disk. There was also a more advanced player with more functions. I purchased my Victor Stream early on and as the technology continued to advance. I am now using my third device.
The Victor Stream has more features than just a device for listening to audio books, but I tend to use my machine mostly for that feature. I love that I can stop and restart the reading at any time. I like knowing how much time has passed in the recording and what time in hours and minutes remain. I especially like the feature where I can speed up or slow down the voice of the narrator. I often use this feature. I especially appreciate the sleep function. When I listen to my book before falling asleep, I set this function for 15 minutes. I am usually asleep by that time and by morning I don’t have to search back and forth too long before I find my place again.
This year the CNIB Library (CELA) has moved to a new system bypassing Canada Post. Instead of waiting for my audio books to arrive in the mail, I can now go online, choose my selection, and after pressing a series of keyboard commands on my computer, my selection magically will be added to the bookshelf on my Victor Reader. I say magically because I really have no idea of how this technology works. I just know that it does.
These days, many people listen to audio books. It isn’t just people with a print disability. If a person can keep up with the technology, access to print materials in audible format is becoming more readily available. Technology is leveling the playing field.
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