How I Learned to Love the Audiobooks I Hate

Abstract

Abstract This is an article about reading and the senses. While the world today is increasingly visual, framed by the flat screen, reading is, and has always been, largely a multisensory act. Conducting research on blind readers in the past helped the author reexamine her own visual biases in the present and learn to love the audiobooks she thought she hated. For the author, then, the expanding joys of reading have been closely linked to disability gain: the rich variety of human ability and experience offers an amazing resource for understanding everyday practices like reading anew.