Free Books

Parents can find free books online for their childen with visual impairment from these internet sites.

By Margaret Mary Myers

Many people have worked hard to get classical books onto the internet, so that they will be available to as many people as possible. These are books that are in the public domain. "Public domain" means that a book is past its copyright.

One resource I would like to share is the Gutenberg Project, a volunteer project which computerized many valuable out of print books in the public domain.

Librivox is an apparently still active internet board for volunteers to record chapters of books in the public domain to make the audio files available to the world, for free.

If your student can use a computer with the aide of a screenreader, screen magnification, you may also like the children's book options available in text at byGosh.com.

Is your child a user of the Library of Congress, National Library Service Talking Books? And the many Braille books and courses they offer? Did you know you can look for specific books and you can also look for specific categories of books? The Library of Congress search page which offers audio, braille, and print/braille books for preschool through grade 8. Once you find out what books are available, you can request them from your local NLS library. For those who are eligible, these books are completely free! They ship them out, and you mail them back, using Free Matter for the Blind mail. The Library of Congress books are available to the "blind and physically handicapped".

Additionally, Amazon also has free books you can read on your kindle or extra durable kids fire kindle. You can also download the free kindle application to your computer or android phone. Or use the Apple App store for your I-Phone. Here is a link to some free children's books. Another way to find free books, try going to a category you like, for example classic books and set the order to list books from lowest to highest cost. You will find some useless books but also some really good classics now in public domain, many which were originally made available by the Gutenberg Project.

For links to free Braille books, try the Paths to Literacy website.


Margaret Mary Myers homeschooled her legally blind teenage son in Baltimore, Maryland.