Victor Reader, the world’s most successful talking book player for blind and low vision people, offers new wireless Internet connectivity features for both the Victor Reader Stratus and Victor Reader Stream models. This new way of downloading allows users to get DAISY audiobooks directly on their Victor Reader without having to use a computer or wait for a CD in the mail

In 1999, the first Victor Reader played digital CD books distributed to users by free postal delivery. Now, with wireless connectivity, libraries for the blind are delivering digital talking books, magazines, and newspapers directly to the newest Victor Reader players over the Internet. Never in the 70 years of talking books for the blind has the book been delivered so quickly and easily.

Case Studies

Swedish Agency for Accessible Media - MTM

Sweden boasts great success with this new technology. In partnership with the DAISY Consortium and HumanWare, the Swedish Agency for Accessible Media - MTM now delivers the daily newspaper directly to the Victor Reader Stratus players of more than 6000 blind and low vision people. Using its new wireless 3G capability, the Stratus connects to the MTM newspaper service and without any intervention by the user or need for a computer, the Stratus downloads the newspaper. The user wakes up in the morning and simply presses the Play button of their Victor Reader Stratus to listen to their daily newspaper. Thousands of Swedish blind and low vision people who cannot read print are now again enjoying newspapers. The newspaper download service uses the DAISY Online Delivery web service developed by the DAISY Consortium. This same service can also be used to download talking books from partnering DAISY libraries around the world.

CNIB Library - Canada

For example, in Canada, the CNIB Library has announced a new Direct to Player service. Using the same DAISY Online Delivery service, CNIB clients now can have their DAISY talking books delivered directly to their Victor Reader Stratus over the Internet without need to use a computer. After listening to the book, simply press the RETURN Book button and another book will automatically download to the player. No longer will CNIB clients need to wait for CD books to be delivered in the mail nor will they need to learn technical skills to download books with a computer.

Bookshare - USA

In the USA, the Victor Reader Stream pocket sized player has also gone wireless. With the Stream’s new Wi-Fi capability, members of the acclaimed Bookshare.org library service are able to browse, search and download from the growing collection of 200,000 books including educational texts, reference books, and works of fiction. Again, no computer is needed - the Victor Reader Stream does it all.

More online wireless content access

Also in the United States, members of the National Federation of the Blind NFB Newsline Service can now have their daily newspaper transmitted directly to their Victor Reader Stream.

And most recently, in February 2014, the latest version 4.3 software for the Stream introduced a new Internet Radio app as well as access to the well-known Wikipedia and Wiktionary online reference services.

Through HumanWare’s partnership with ooTunes Radio, Stream users may search over 36,000 radio stations worldwide and add any station of interest to a Favorites list. Also, while reading books, users may highlight a word and get its definition from the Internet Wiktionary service. And to help the audio book reader with their research, simply text a search phrase on the Stream keypad and the Stream will find and download the relevant article from Wikipedia. The user may navigate the article like a DAISY book and even save it on the Stream for later study.

With over 15 years in the global marketplace and over 500,000 players in use, HumanWare continues to innovate with Victor Reader. Today, Victor Reader extends its talking book, document, and music playback features, to the wireless world where downloaded books and newspapers, streaming radio stations, and online Wikipedia reference tools become part of Victor Reader’s increasing access to digital content. And best of all, users continue to navigate the new online content through the player’s popular and simple to use bookshelf interface.