On her blindness

Abstract

During her recovery from eye surgery the author suffered a period of severe sight impairment. During this time she relied on spoken word cassette tapes from her public library for entertainment. The pleasures of listening to this material are described, as are a number of unexpected problems. Commercially produced cassettes provide bibliographic and reader details in small print on the box but not in spoken form on the tape. Libraries find difficulty in labelling cassettes without obliterating essential detail.