Pablo Fernandez

I have one little idea to implement for Audible: make it free for blind people.

I’m sure there are channels to verify whether someone is (legally) blind: government certificates, associations, or something like that. On third world countries, audio books for blind people are a rare and expensive luxury. Building a public library of them that can be accessed for free is a painstaking process that some volunteers do. And here I am talking about collecting cassettes.

I don’t think this market would represent huge numbers in Audible revenues (although it’s a big market, as show by screen readers which are only useful for visually impaired people). And before you say “but an mp3 is of no use to someone with a cassette player”, I’m sure it is much less effort to download an mp3 and record it in a cassette than finding the cassette with the book in the first place. Some volunteers would do it for people with sight problems that want to access books and have no means.

Unlike screen readers, Audible is useful for everybody and providing a free service to handicapped people is an amazing thing to do, and if played correctly, also a very good PR campaign. If not free, it should at least be very cheap.

Reviewed by Daniel Magliola. Thank you!