Audiobook products and apps: What tools can help someone with low-vision listen to their favourite books?

Audiobooks have become extremely popular, and numerous libraries and online sources have started bolstering their selection of books that are read aloud.

The Centre for Equitable Library Access (CELA) was created for the purpose of giving people with vision disabilities access to a broad range of materials in the formats of their choice. By registering for CELA’s services, individuals can read newspapers, magazines and books through the CELA digital library and download them wirelessly through its Direct to Player service. Audiobooks are also available through CD-ROM and are delivered through your local library. To learn more about CELA, call 1-855-655-2273 or email at help@celalibrary.ca.

Local libraries often have their own collection of audiobooks available in a CD-ROM format for borrowing – just as you would a print book. Your local library may also have a subscription to other free audiobook providers – such as AudioBookCloud or Hoopla – which allow card-holders the ability to listen to audiobooks for free. Contact your local library to inquire about how you can access their collection of audiobooks.

• AudioBookCloud is an online audio book library with a large array of audiobooks for schools and libraries. If your local library has a subscription to this service, you may be able to access the audiobooks through your library card. In some cases, users can access audiobooks from AudioBookCloud through their desktop computers.
• Hoopla is a similar service that gives users access to audiobooks (as well as movies, music and more). If your local library has subscribed to Hoopla’s services, you may be able to access Hoopla audiobooks through your library card. Smartphone users can download Hoopla’s apps for Android and Apple devices.

There are a variety of other Apple and Android apps available so users can easily listen to audiobooks without going through their local library.

For Apple:

• Audiobooks by Cross Forward Consulting, LLC (at iTunes) offers many LibriVox recordings, meaning any book, poem or short story that has entered the public domain may be recorded and uploaded to the app for free listening.
• Audible by Amazon (at audible.ca) is a subscription-based service that provides access to the largest selection of professionally narrated audiobooks. The service is about $15 (CDN) per month for membership, which provides a credit for one free audiobook of the user's choice each month. Additional audiobooks can be purchased at any time; prices vary for each audiobook. Once the subscription has been purchased, Audible can be downloaded from the Apple App Store on the iPhone or iPad (at iTunes).

For Android:

• Free Audiobooks by Sanity Audio Apps (at Google Play) is a catalog of free audiobooks in the public domain, which are available for download.
• The Audiobooks Category of the Google Play Store (at Google Play) has a large array of audiobooks available for users to download. These books’ prices vary, ranging from $5 to $50 (CDN).
• Audible by Amazon (at audible.ca) is a subscription-based service that provides access to the largest selection of professionally narrated audiobooks. The service is about $15 (CDN) per month for membership, which provides a credit for one free audiobook of the user's choice each month. Additional audiobooks can be purchased at any time; prices vary for each audiobook. Once the subscription has been purchased, Audible can be downloaded from the Google Play  store.