Books for the Blind Go Digital
From: nytimes.com - July 12, 2001 
By: Catherine Greenman

Since 1951, Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic, a nonprofit organization
based in Princeton, has recorded thousands of textbooks, from kindergarten to
graduate-level, on cassette tapes that it makes available to schools and to
blind and dyslexic students.  

Books on tape are a boon to students who don't read Braille or who can't find
a Braille edition of a particular textbook. (The organization has put some
83,000 textbooks on tape, many of them not available in Braille.) But the
tapes, though not as cumbersome as Braille books, can be unwieldy, with a
typical 400-page book requiring 8 to 12 cassettes. Navigating hours of tape
to find a specific page can be tedious.  

Now, academic life for blind or dyslexic students is about to get easier. In
the last year, Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic has started to record
textbooks on CD's that can be played on PC's or on special players, designed
by such companies as VisuAide or Plextor, that cost about $500.  

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/12/technology/circuits/12BLIN.html?ex=995975384&ei=1&en=8bfa592661bbd957
http://www.rfbd.org