Internet Archive Launches Books for the Blind, Proves Itself More Useful Than Just the Wayback Machine

Today the Internet Archive announced a new service that will provide over a million books for the blind and visually impaired.

I was so excited, I practically broke the New Post button to tell you all about this awesome new service, before stopping cold to ponder how exactly Internet Archive planned to bring braille to the internet. Seriously.

But my idiocy aside, this is a great initiative. The IA folks have been hard at work scanning hundreds of thousands of books to be digitized into DAISY (a text-to-speech format) for consumption by the print-disabled population, at no cost. Their plan is to continually expand the collection, and donations are welcome. You can get a sweet eyeful – so to speak – of the full press release here.

It’s nice to know that SOME people still read books, at least.

[Via Press release]