It will be a talking book that even looks like a book, although most of its users will never see it.
Instead of a cassette tape, it will have no moving parts but will read a volume digitally from a card smaller than a credit card. The dull silvery cover folds on a hinge to the size of a normal book from a library shelf.
When open, it looks like a book with just two thick pages, divided by a hinge. A series of differently shaped buttons along the edges will enable the blind reader to turn pages forward and backward, skip quickly, insert bookmarks, search for a remembered passage.
The wooden model will be reproduced in plastic. The principles of the hardware are known, but it will take three to four years to adapt them so that the new digital readers are no more expensive than the tape readers in today's talking books.
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