Nan Hawthorne, a successful historical novelist, was born with Stargardt’s Disease, a form of macular degeneration that causes the deterioration of a person’s vision over time. Nan has been partially blind her entire life; now with 20/1200 vision, she has learned to live with the disease but has had to constantly rely on others for help when reading and researching. In fact, to accomplish this, she had to go through the laborious effort of mailing every research book she needed to a third party service that convert the lengthy tomes into spoken word in order for her to complete her research - a frustrating and time consuming endeavor. “I had to get creative and depend on other people, which I don’t like to be forced to do,” explained Nan. “Having to impose upon others to help me was very uncomfortable and left me feeling like I couldn’t take care of myself. Also, sending books away to be converted

and read was very time consuming as it could often take up to three months to get results.” Nan not only reads for pleasure but also reads in order to make a living. Being partially blind was not going to hold her back. While trying to find a solution that would empower her with gift of independence, Nan discovered the Plustek BookReader V100, a reading device that has both Text-to-Speech (TTS) and Optical Character Recognition (OCR) features that allow it to transform printed words into audio output, which can then be saved in MP3 or WAV formats compatible with most portable audio players. Nan says she was impressed with the dramatic results she achieved even from her very first attempt. “It has been like night and day since I started using the BookReader,” said Nan. “Not being able to read on my own was…

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Sight-Impaired Novelist Finds Freedom with BookReader