“First, Sophie Godek tried to read books with a magnifying glass. Then, she turned to a tablet to make the words on her e-books larger. Eventually, she couldn’t even see that. The 95-year-old was losing her sight, and with it, one of her favorite hobbies,” Ashlee Clark Thompson writes for CNET. “‘She wasn’t able to read anymore, and that was a big loss,’ said her son Jim Godek.”
“Last year, the younger Godek had an idea: What if he could get his mom a device that could read books to her without the need to navigate a control screen that she had a hard time seeing?” Thompson writes. “That device turned out to be the Amazon Echo, an internet-connected smart speaker that responds to voice commands. Jim Godek figured that he could buy his mother audiobooks from Audible, then teach her to use voice prompts to have the Echo play the audiobook.”
“At first, Sophie Godek was a little wary,” Thompson writes. “Eventually, she agreed to try it. It’s been nearly a year, and she’s listened to 178 books.”
Much more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Making it simple and writing down clear instructions are crucial!
Yell loudly?
Ummm, MDN…I don’t think that writing down instructions is the best approach in this particular instance (vision problem).
Hey siri.. read me a book…
Siri:
I would love to ‘yojimbo ‘ but i missplaced my glasses in another dimension.
Thats what i got! Truly!
I guess apple should also work on glasses for siri.. beyond AR .
Not sure what the command should be, but “hey Siri, play audio book Lord of the Rings”, should do it.
Now having Siri read an epub book, that’s turned into a can of legal worms from the actor’s guild wanting to be paid.
My mom first picked up the iMac round mouse (not plugged in yet) and held it like a pocket stopwatch, rolling the mouse ball with her thumb, squeezing the mouse to click. She never liked it after I showed how it really worked.
She called me after cleaning and dusting around the imac that it wasn’t working and I came over to find the USB mouse jammed into the ethernet port (hey, it fit).
Thankfully she died not long after.
(kidding we had a dark sense of humor and that would have made her laugh)