#audiobooks

Because, yes, listening to a story and reading a story use mostly the same parts of the brain. Yes, listening to the audiobook counts as "having read" a book. Yes, oral storytelling has a long, glorious tradition and many cultures maintained their histories through oral history or oral + art history, having never developed a true written language, and their oral stories and histories are just as valid and rich as written literature.

We still can't call listening in the absence of reading "literacy."

The term literacy needs to stay restricted to the written word, to the ability to access and engage with written texts, because we need to be able to talk about illiteracy. We need to be able to identify when a society is failing to teach children to read, and if we start saying that listening to stories is literacy, we lose the ability to describe those systemic failures.

Blind folks have been knee-deep in this debate for a long time. Schools struggle to provide resources to teach students Braille and enforcing the teaching of Braille to low-vision and blind children is a constant uphill battle. A school tried to argue that one girl didn't need to learn Braille because she could read 96-point font. Go check what that is. The new prevalence of audiobooks and TTS is a huge threat to Braille literacy because it provides institutions with another excuse to not provide Braille education or Braille texts.

That matters. Braille-literate blind and low-vision people have a 90% employment rate. For those who don't know Braille, it's 30%. Braille literacy is linked to higher academic success in all fields.

Moving outside the world of Braille, literacy of any kind matters. Being able to read text has a massive impact on a person's ability to access information, education, and employment. Being able to talk about the inability to read text matters, because that's how we're able to hold systems accountable.

Edit: this is getting an insane number of votes and I just wanted to say every one of you is right and I love you.

Someone said they speed up the audiobook to help processing, I guess kind of tricking their working memory? I have tried it and it doesn't work :D

My friend Fadel (@fadel-dani) wrote to me today. He asked me to imagine going about my day, and being surrounded by death and danger everywhere.

He writes about the narrowing of life in the genocide:

They bombed a mosque, so we don't go to pray at the mosques. They bombed a café, so we don't sit in cafés. They bombed a bus, so we don't ride buses. They bombed a car, so we don't drive cars. They bombed a tent, They bombed a water station, They bombed a diesel seller, They bombed a charging point, They bombed and bombed and bombed…

He had been trying to raise funds to get emergency surgery after surviving a bombing that destroyed his home and left him injured with shrapnel in his body.

Before he can even travel to emergency care, he needs medication that costs $400 every month, and he and his family need food so they do not die from starvation in the genocidal famine imposed by Israel.

His campaign has been vetted by @gazavetters (#197) and 90-ghost.

Audiobooks can expose listeners to new vocabulary and forms of syntax.

Audiobooks can present listeners with long-form fictional narratives with engaging characters, interesting literary devices, and poetic turns of phrase.

Audiobooks can teach listeners new information in a long-form manner that goes into depth or wide breadth on a particular subject or subjects.

Audiobooks can help listeners' verbal comprehension skills.

Audiobooks can do all these things without presenting the same difficulties to blind, low vision, partially sighted, visually impaired, or dyslexic listeners; listeners with ADHD; listeners who experience physical difficulty with holding a book or e-reader; or listeners who are disabled in a host of other ways that a physical book or e-reader might present.