Electronic books as low vision aids

Abstract

Every year, around 34 000 people in England and Wales are newly registered as sight impaired or severely sight impaired, the majority of whom have some residual vision.1 In order to read books, people with low vision will generally rely on large print books and supplementary optical2 or electronic3 magnifiers. Only about 1.5% of the approximately two million books currently in print are available in large print format.4

Recently, several electronic book readers have become commercially available.5 These consist of a low glare electronic paper screen and internal memory, which can typically hold the full text of between 150 and 2000 full-length novels. Electronic paper has a wide viewing angle of …