Assistive Media

Assistive Media, Inc. is a nonprofit Internet-based reading service to serve people with visual and reading impairments.^[1]

Assistive Media was founded in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in 1996 by David Erdody as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.^[2][3] According to Erdody, it was inspired by his father's diagnosis of diabetic retinopathy, an avid reader of The New Yorker magazine and audiobooks.^[1][4] He considers Duvall Hecht's Books on Tape (company) and the narration style of Grover Gardner to have had a major influence on his admiration for the audiobook format [1] . Utilizing volunteer readers and work-study students from the University of Michigan,^[2][3] Assistive Media began producing and distributing spoken-word recordings of otherwise inaccessible materials on audio cassette to The Washtenaw County, Michigan Library for the Blind and Physically Disabled, a participating library of the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped of the Library of Congress.^[3]

In 1998, with the advent of online digital audio formats such as RealAudio, direct distribution of recordings shifted to the Assistive Media website and has received praise from the at-large online disabled community and also from David McCullough, Mark Cuban, and John Perry Barlow.^[4][5] In 1999, Assistive Media was awarded RealNetworks, Inc.'s Progressive Streamers Award as the best nonprofit streaming web site of the year over Peter Gabriel's Witness (organization).^[1][6]

Assistive Media has produced spoken-word recordings of works of nonfiction literature and long-form journalism from The Atlantic, Granta, Harper's Magazine, The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, Scientific American, and Wired.^[4] It is considered one of the longest continuously running Internet-based nonprofit services. In 2011, Assistive Media began recording unabridged full-length books of biographical, historical, and contemporary nonfiction for online delivery to libraries that specialize in books for the blind [2]. Assistive Media is also affiliated with LifeScienceAudio.com.