Sometimes it’s hard to find something to fill the time of the one you are caring for, particularly if they have a vision or motor impairment. The days can be long and tedious for the caregiver and the one needing care.
What can they do for recreation considering their limitations? What could be interesting, entertaining, and accessible to a senior with vision and motor disabilities?
Choice Magazine Listening (CML) sends audio magazine articles to adults with vision impairment, multiple sclerosis, cerebral palsy, ALS, macular degeneration, dyslexia, and Parkinson’s. The service is available to individuals in nursing homes, assisted living centers, or any residence in the U.S. This free service is meant to provide hours of enjoyment for recreational listening seniors.
Suppose you are a nursing home activity director or a senior center director. In that case, this is an opportunity to provide an enjoyable, free activity for the seniors you serve.
Caregivers, family members, and disabled individuals can request service participation.
CML provides 12 hours of selected articles from some of the best magazines, which are then read aloud by the best audiobook narrators.
A special digital talking-book player is needed to listen to the audio articles, provided free by the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped, Library of Congress.
The digital talking book player is portable and easy to use. You may get a free application for the digital talking-book player at the website of Choice Magazine Listening, or you may call and have an application mailed to you. Phone: 1-888-724-6423. Website: www.choicemagazinelistening.org.
The articles are mailed to your home on a digital cartridge that can be played on a digital talking book player. The cartridge fits in the machine easily; just push the “ play” button and start enjoying some hours listening to some of the current magazine articles by some well-known authors.
You and your loved one can enjoy these for two months, then you will return the cartridge in the plastic mailer that arrived by the due date.
If you have a computer, download the Choice Listening Magazine audio articles on your computer. You will need a thumb drive/flash memory/USB drive you can purchase at a store and a high-speed internet connection.
You can read the current articles and the back issues and build your library using thumb drives or digital talking book cartridges that you have purchased. The articles that can be downloaded are available online before the articles that are mailed.