Talking books for visually impaired people have existed in the UK since 1935. The format has changed beyond recognition: from gramophone to wire recording to cassette to USB to smart speaker. What hasn’t changed is what people actually want from them: a good story, a newspaper in the morning, something to listen to on a walk, and ideally someone to talk to about it afterwards.
For most sighted readers, that kind of reading life is easy to assemble. A library card, a streaming subscription, a friend who’s read the same book. For blind and partially sighted people, it has historically involved navigating multiple different services, formats, and platforms to get the same experience.
RealSAM BookClub has been running as a reading service for blind and partially sighted people across the UK for some time, available on RealSAM Pocket and Alexa. It’s now available everywhere (well, on iOS, Android, Alexa, RealSAM Pocket, and the web at least).
This means you no longer need to own specific hardware to access BookClub’s world of accessible literature.
What RealSAM BookClub includes
RealSAM BookClub is a talking books service for visually impaired and print disabled people across the UK. It brings together several trusted, accessible content libraries into a single, voice-first experience, so you don’t have to remember where anything lives or navigate between different platforms to find what you want to hear.
The libraries included in your membership are:
RNIB Reading Services — tens of thousands of professionally narrated audiobooks across genres, from contemporary fiction and biography to thriller and history. RNIB has been providing accessible books to blind and partially sighted people in the UK since 1935, and their library is one of the most comprehensive in the country.
LibriVox — over 50,000 classic and public domain titles, read by volunteers from around the world. If you want Shakespeare, Dickens, Austen, or any other classic of English literature, it’s here.
Torch Trust — a further catalogue of recorded titles with a focus on faith, inspiration, and Theology.
RNIB Newsagent — accessible versions of UK national newspapers, so you can stay up to date with the news without needing to navigate a website or app.
A curated podcast selection — chosen specifically for the blind and low-vision community.
Radio — listen to your favourite stations.
All of this is available through a single subscription, accessible by voice on your RealSAM Pocket, Alexa, iOS, Android, or the web. You say what you want to hear, and you hear it. No menus to navigate, no settings to adjust, no remembering which title lives on which platform.
How does it work?
The experience is designed around voice from the start. No need to browse a catalogue or scroll through results. Simply tell BookClub what you want to read.
Start a chapter on your Alexa speaker in the morning. Pick it up on your RealSAM Pocket on the way to an appointment. Continue on your phone in the evening. BookClub remembers exactly where you left off across all of your devices.
This kind of cross-device continuity is something that listeners who use mainstream streaming services (like Spotify, BBC Sounds, and Audible) take for granted. For blind and partially sighted people, it hasn’t always been available in a format that removes the visual interface entirely.
BookClub does.
The monthly pick and live discussion
Every month, RealSAM BookClub chooses a book. It might be contemporary fiction, literary non-fiction, a classic, or something with a strong sense of place. The picks are chosen with discussion in mind: books that reward close listening and give people something to talk about.
On the 25th of each month, we hold a live online discussion open to all BookClub members. There is no pressure to have finished the book, and no requirement to arrive with polished thoughts. The discussions tend to go somewhere unexpected — someone notices something the rest of the group missed, someone disagrees with the consensus and says so clearly, someone joins intending to listen and ends up talking for twenty minutes.
Our August pick is Emma by Jane Austen, narrated by Lucy Scott.
You may think you know it, but the charm of Austen’s seminal novel is that each new read produces a new perspective. You can find out more about the August pick and how to join the discussion on our BookClub page.
Why talking books for visually impaired people work better with community
Reading is often described as a solitary activity. It doesn’t have to be, and for a lot of people it works considerably better when it isn’t.
There are particular reasons why community matters for blind and partially sighted readers. Over two million people in the UK live with sight loss, and many of them describe a sense of social isolation as one of the most significant changes that comes with it — not necessarily because they leave the house less, but because the ordinary texture of shared cultural life (watching the same film, reading the same book, following the same news story) becomes more effortful to access.
A shared reading experience doesn’t solve that directly. But it gives people something to be in together — the same story, at the same time, with a conversation waiting at the end. That matters in a way that a library catalogue alone doesn’t.
The BookClub Facebook group is there for the rest of the month, for recommendations, questions, reactions, and whatever else comes up. Participation is entirely optional — some members come to every discussion and post in the group daily; others simply listen to the monthly pick on their own.
Who is RealSAM BookClub for? talking books for visually impaired
BookClub is for blind, partially sighted, and print disabled people across the UK. Library licences restrict access to those who are blind, have low vision, or have a print disability, so when you sign up, you’ll be asked to confirm that this applies to you or the person you’re subscribing on behalf of.
It works particularly well for:
- People who were lifelong readers before their sight changed and are looking for a way back into that
- Older adults adjusting to sight loss who want something that doesn’t require navigating complex technology
- People who already use RealSAM Pocket and want to extend what it can do
- Anyone who has tried audiobooks before but found the experience of finding and managing titles too effortful
If you’re a family member or carer looking at BookClub on behalf of a blind or partially sighted person, you can sign up on their behalf and set the service up for them. Our support team at realsam.co.uk/contact-us can help if you get stuck.
How much does RealSAM BookClub cost?
BookClub is available on three plans:
- Pay Monthly: £5.99 per month
- Annual Plan: £49.99 per year
VAT relief applies because access is restricted to blind, low-vision, and print-disabled users. The price you see is the price you pay.
Both plans give you full access to the same content. The difference is how long you commit. The annual plan works out at just under £4.17 a month (less than one coffee a week!).
How to get started
You can sign up directly at realsam.co.uk/bookclub. Once you’ve chosen a plan and completed checkout, you’ll receive an activation code that unlocks BookClub on your chosen device.
If you have questions before signing up, our UK-based team is on 0333 772 2708, Monday to Friday, 9-5.
Find out more and join BookClub → Join our online reading community →
