Sybil asked me when I first joined the site to talk about the technology I used. I keep meaning to do so, but haven’t had a chance to bother until now. 

Then, today, I decided to go for it and buy a new ebook reader. The one I’d been using, the Book Port, was used when I got it, and it finally decided to go to that great computer lab in the sky. There was much woe and the gnashing of teeth around my house, because I loved the hell out of that thing. I just had to load all of my ebooks onto a compact flash card, clip the machine to my belt, and away I’d go. I could read in whatever position I liked, and the battery lasted forever.

However, there were issues with the Book Port. One of them was that the voice it uses to read ebooks aloud is so very artificial-sounding. Not that this is a huge problem for me. I am blind. Synthesized speech is something I deal with, but having Stephen Hawking read my smut is sooo not sexy. Also, the Book Port won’t read digital talking books from the National Library Service for the Blind. And my tape recorder — which is also something less than completely portable — isn’t exactly working at the moment.

So when the Book Port bit the bullet, after I got over it, cried copious amounts of tears, and read books off my PDA for a while, I decided I needed something else. (My PDA was OK for reading books, but its battery life lasts approximately as long as the attention span of a two-year-old with ADHD.) I knew what I had to do, and as of this writing, I have officially done it.

I purchased a Victor Reader Stream. When these things first came out, the buzz around the blindness community was vociferous. They were soooo cool. Everyone wanted one. I couldn’t imagine what they could possibly do that was so awesome and that you couldn’t get done other places, so I mainly just rolled my eyes. But I have to admit, now I’ve kind of bought into the hype.

First of all, when I got a chance to hear a demonstration of one, I was impressed by the voice. It sounds, well, maybe not entirely human, but certainly more human-esque than anything else I own, which is just more comfortable to listen to. Plus, I can change the rate of speed that the synthesized voice talks in, and I can do the same for audio files without losing any of the quality. This is good, because I can get through a book much faster if I listen to it, and most of the reason I don’t listen to audiobooks is that I don’t really need a theatrical production when I read.

The other thing I’m excited about regarding the Victor Reader Stream is that it will read DAISY books. I’m not sure what DAISY stands for [Ed.: Here’s a link describing DAISY.], for I only speak small amounts of geek, but they’re digital talking books. Recording for the Blind, which does all of my college textbooks, uses that format now most of the time. And now I can download those digital talking books I mentioned. Not to mention, I can still read books in HTML, doc, txt, and rtf formats, which I could do with the Book Port.

For me, as someone who has been blind and a reader all her life, this is truly an amazing thing. Even if I never use all the options available to me to listen to or read books, I like that they’re there. And the Victor Reader Stream seems versatile.

Of course, I just placed the order for it, and as my sister pointed out earlier today, I am hell on my gadgets. We’ll see how I like it once the product gets in.

What about the rest of you? Got any nifty gadgets you’d like to talk about? Want to ask me those burning questions you’ve always wanted to know about blind people but were too embarrassed to bring up? Feel free to do so in comments.