Tucked in an unassuming Salt Lake City office park, the Utah State Library for the Blind and Disabled is home to the country’s largest collection of braille books. It also has a growing selection of audiobooks.
It’s been a game-changer for Anna Jeffery, president of the Utah Council of the Blind and an avid reader.
Jeffery is legally blind, and in her home, listening to audiobooks is a multigenerational affair. She borrows audio children’s books and listens with her 2- and 4-year-old grandkids. They often start out sitting on the couch but end up on the floor, the older kid following along in a picture book.
The audiobook plays through a special device provided by the library, and the kids love pressing the buttons.
“There's a big green button, and we've learned colors, so we're looking for the big green button to start and pause it,” Jeffery said.
Recently, that meant interrupting their Dr. Seuss time to talk about whether the kids liked Sam-I-Am’s much-touted green eggs and ham.
“And then, of course, we had green eggs afterwards,” Jeffery said.
The library’s audiobooks have also helped her connect with her own kids. Listening to the same books they’re reading, and then talking about them, makes her feel included, not just present.
“Like, my son plays soccer, and I go to the game, and I'm there to support, but I could not tell you what's going on on that field,” she offered as an example.
Jeffery picks popular titles to enjoy on her own. For those looking for more niche reads, a team of volunteers records and edits audiobooks that don’t already exist, or aren’t in the right format for the Library of Congress’s Braille and Audio Reading Download program.
Longtime volunteer Dave Toronto is thinking about the people on the receiving end of those books.
“Whatever the product is, whether I'm editing or whether I'm reading, I want it to be as accurate and as quality as I can get it,” he said.
Local productions include a field guide to Utah plants, books related to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, clean romances and graphic novels. Turning a graphic novel into an audiobook is a production. Just ask Jason Powers, audio recording manager for the Utah State Library, who coordinates volunteers and fine-tunes the final products.
One called Thunderous, about a young Lakota girl, took 10 voice actors, many of whom were Native American. The library partnered with the Montana State Library to make it happen.
“Basically, someone has to write, like, a narrator character into this book, so that the pictures can be explained and the actions can be explained through it,” Powers said.
The library serves about 3,400 people directly in Utah, plus a few thousand more across Alaska, Montana, Wyoming and Idaho. It also contracts with the Library of Congress to house part of its braille collection and provide materials to libraries west of the Mississippi River.
To access materials, patrons need a letter from a medical professional saying they have a disability. That could mean blindness or low vision, dyslexia, or an injury like two broken arms.
Audiobooks are available digitally through the Library of Congress or on physical cartridges, which are loaded with a patron’s requested books before being mailed out at no cost to the library or user.
That makes a difference for people who aren’t comfortable with screen readers or smartphones, Powers said, because the cartridges can only go into the device one way, and the buttons are labeled in braille.
In her work with the Utah Council of the Blind, Jeffery recommends the library right away to people who’ve recently lost their vision.
Audiobooks aren’t just for fun and family time, she said. Listening can also help people train their brains to rely on what they hear, not what they see.
“Sitting on the couch and listening to that book is one way to start getting those senses to work again — or to work the way you need them to,” she said. “Because they've always been working; you just haven't been as aware of them.”
Macy Lipkin is a Report for America corps member who reports for KUER in northern Utah.
