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A UK guide for families

Talking books in the UK: every way to get them

Britain's first talking books went out on 7 November 1935, to soldiers blinded in the First World War, and an average novel had to be squashed onto ten shellac records and posted in a sturdy box. (Spare a thought for the postman on a Dickens week.) Ninety years on, the choice is far bigger, and a lot harder to see whole.

By Tara Button, Ruth's granddaughter and the founder of Reading to Ruth · Updated 20 October 2026

First, who counts as "print-disabled"?

If you've started looking into talking books for your mum or dad, you'll have met the phrase "print-disabled" within about five minutes. It sounds like something you'd need a consultant's letter for. You don't. It means anyone who can't read ordinary print comfortably, whatever the reason, and the charity libraries draw the line generously:

• Sight loss of any kind. RNIB's service is for anyone who's blind, partially sighted or struggling with print. Its own FAQ says you don't need to be registered as sight impaired or severely sight impaired.
• Hands that won't hold a book. Calibre Audio includes arthritis, Parkinson's, multiple sclerosis and motor neurone disease.
• A stroke, a brain injury or a cognitive impairment that makes a page hard to follow. Calibre lists these too.
• Illness, disability or a mental health condition that's made reading a struggle. That's how Listening Books puts it, and it welcomes the people who care for them as well.

Calibre answers the question most families are too polite to ask: no, you don't need to be registered blind, and it doesn't ask for evidence when you apply. If you aren't sure your dad qualifies, ring and ask. That's what the helplines are there for.

Everything below was checked in October 2026. Each service's own website has the latest.

RNIB Talking Books: free

This is the big one, still run by the charity that started it all. RNIB's Talking Books service is free and has more than 40,000 titles for adults and children; its online library, which counts braille books as well, lists over 54,000. It used to cost members £50 a year, mostly paid by their councils, until RNIB made it free in 2015. You can have the books four ways:

• By post, on CD or USB stick. A DAISY CD holds one book, and a USB stick holds three. Postal books are set up by phone, so ring the RNIB Helpline on 0303 123 9999.
• As a download to a phone, tablet or computer, from RNIB Reading Services.
• In an app. The free Dolphin EasyReader app, on iPhone, iPad and Android, uses the same login.
• On an Alexa speaker. Link the account to the free skill, then say "Alexa, open RNIB Talking Books" and ask for a title, author or subject. Alexa keeps the place in every book.

The CDs and sticks need a talking book player. RNIB says these cost from £41.99 to £354, and it runs a Technology Grant Scheme that DAISY and USB players can be applied for through, so ask about a grant before you buy one. (I've written more about simple CD, MP3 and USB players if you'd like the long version.)

Calibre Audio and Listening Books

Calibre Audio: £3 a month

A charity library of more than 23,000 audiobooks in 70 categories, including books recorded by its own volunteer narrators that you can't get in audio anywhere else. Adults pay £3 a month or £30 a year, and under-18s join free. Listen by streaming on its My Calibre website, in the Libby or Dolphin EasyReader apps, or have books posted on a USB stick and keep each one for eight weeks. For the postal service you can build a list of titles, or just tell them the kinds of book your mum likes and leave the choosing to them. (Handy if, like me, you've no idea which Agatha Christies she's already read.) See calibreaudio.org.uk.

Listening Books: £25 a year, or free

More than 10,000 audiobooks, streamed on its website or downloaded in the Libby app, plus thousands of newspapers and magazines through PressReader at no extra cost. Membership is £25 a year. If that would stop someone joining, they can ask for a free sponsored membership; the charity takes your word for it and doesn't ask for proof. It also has memberships for care homes. See listening-books.org.uk.

Talking books for anyone, sight loss or not

Your public library

Many councils lend audiobooks free through BorrowBox or Libby; North Northamptonshire and Moray both use BorrowBox, for example. All you need is a library card and PIN, and the books play inside the library's app. Ask at your parent's library which app they use.

BBC Sounds

It costs nothing and it's full of readings and radio drama. When I looked, the drama section had Sherlock Holmes short stories, Daphne du Maurier's The Birds and a Frankenstein in instalments, and Radio 4 Extra plays from the BBC's archive all day, murder mysteries included. Programmes come and go, so a favourite series may vanish for a while (Book at Bedtime had nothing available the day I checked). There's a BBC Sounds skill for Alexa, which asks you to sign in to a BBC account.

LibriVox

Volunteers have recorded more than 21,000 out-of-copyright books for LibriVox, free for anyone. The readers are volunteers, so the quality varies from one book to the next (listen to the first five minutes before you commit to Middlemarch). My guide to free audiobooks in the UK says more.

Audible and the shops

If your parent doesn't qualify for the charity libraries, or wants the new Richard Osman the week it's out, it's a shop. Audible works on a monthly subscription, and its books play in the Audible app or on an Alexa speaker. Other shops sell audiobooks one at a time. Check the price on the shop's own site, as offers change often.

Reading to Ruth is not connected with RNIB, Calibre Audio, Listening Books, BorrowBox, Libby, the BBC, LibriVox, Audible or Amazon. Their names are trade marks of their owners, and their prices and services may have changed since this was written; check each one's own site.

The problem none of them solve: the player

You'll have noticed that every route above ends in the same place. Someone has to work a player. The app has to be found on a screen. Alexa has to be asked, in the right words, every time. A DAISY player has a row of buttons to be learned by touch, and a CD has to be found, held by its edges and fed into a slot. For someone who's lived with sight loss for decades, that's no bother at all. For someone losing their sight in their nineties, it can be the whole problem.

My grandmother Ruth is 101, almost completely blind and hard of hearing. She's a Dickens and Little Women woman, and she didn't get on with the RNIB devices. She needed something she could use on her own. So I built her a player with one button.

One big button, filled from your phones

• One big Play button on a tablet, phone or laptop they already have. On the simplest set-up the whole screen is the button.
• It says each title aloud and keeps the place in every book. The narration can be slowed down, which Ruth needed.
• The family choose the books from their own phones, wherever they live, with one PIN for everyone. A free library of classics is included, and any other audiobook can be bought on the family page at the normal shop price.
• Your voices come too. Voice messages from any relative's phone play before the story.

It can't play RNIB, Calibre or Audible books, which stay in their own apps and players. If your mum's happy with those, keep them going. Reading to Ruth is for when the player is what's stopping her.

Try the real player on the home page