Reading to Ruth › Advice for families

Audiobooks for someone living with dementia

A story in a familiar voice can be good company for someone living with dementia. What usually gets in the way is not the book. It is the device: the menus, the passwords, and the place that is lost every time something is pressed by mistake.

By Tara Button, Ruth's granddaughter and the founder of Reading to Ruth · Updated 11 October 2026

Choosing what to play

Every person is different, and you know them best. These are places to start, not rules.

• Old favourites. A book they knew well, read again, asks less of the memory than a new plot.
• Short pieces. Poems, short stories and single chapters can each be enjoyed on their own, with no thread to hold on to.
• An unhurried reading. Some narrators rattle along. A slower reading is easier to follow.
• Voices they know. A minute from a daughter or a grandchild, saying what happened today, is often worth more than the book.
• Songs and prayers. Your own recordings count just as much as books.

Setting a player up so there is nothing to remember

1. One button, and one book to begin with. More can come later, if it suits them.
2. A player that keeps the place. Tomorrow's listening should carry on from today's without anyone searching.
3. Keep the player on the screen. A tablet can be set so the player is the only thing it shows. On an iPad this is called Guided Access. Our set-up guide has the steps for iPad, Android and Amazon Fire.
4. Give it a home. A stand beside their chair, with the charger left plugged in, so it is always in the same place and always charged.
5. Choose a moment. After lunch, or with the afternoon cup of tea. New habits settle most easily next to old ones.
6. Do it together the first few times. Sit with them, let them press the button, listen for five minutes. A carer or another relative can do the same.

There are more small things like these in A good start.

How Reading to Ruth helps

Reading to Ruth is an audiobook player with one big button, on a tablet, phone or laptop they already have. I built it for my grandmother Ruth, who is 101, almost completely blind and hard of hearing. The family run everything else from their own phones.

• There is nothing to remember except the button. On the simplest player the whole screen is Play. Press to listen, press again to pause, and when a book ends the next one begins.
• The place is kept in every book, so a story picked up tomorrow carries on where it stopped. A wrong press does no harm.
• It can change as they do. There are three players: independent, standard and simplest. If things get harder, you move from one to the next from your own phone, and the books stay exactly as they were.
• Your voice arrives on its own. Record a message on your phone. The big button turns green, and the message plays before the story. Your family page shows when it has been heard.
• You can see how they are getting on. The listening diary shows when they have been listening, wherever you live.

Will it suit them?

I can't promise that. Dementia is different for everyone, and Reading to Ruth is new. Some people take to one big button straight away. Others need a carer or a relative to press it with them for a while, and some will not get on with it at all.

That is what the guarantee is for. If they can't get on with it, tell us within 60 days of the day they first use it and we refund the £49.99 in full. If you would like to talk it through first, write to hello@readingtoruth.com and tell me about them. I will be honest about whether I think it is right.

For advice about dementia itself, the Alzheimer's Society is the place to start.