How to make some old radio shows Alexa-accessible for a blind person

June 2, 2023 4:02 PM

I have a friend who is blind. They use Alexa a lot to listen to audiobooks, music, etc. I found a bunch of obscure radio shows on Youtube, and I'd like to package them together somehow into an Alexa-accessible format and give them to my friend as a gift. How do I do this? (Snowflakes within.)

For somebody who could see I might have just burned these episodes to a CD or a flash drive or emailed my friend the audio files, but this friend can't use any of that. It occurred to me that I could upload the episodes for sale on Amazon and then my friend could listen to each one using Alexa, but I'm not sure about the copyright on these shows, plus Amazon has really stringent audio requirements for what they'll sell and these shows are kind of crackly. I'm also not really interested in selling them, I'd prefer if they were just a private gift for my friend. I just want these episodes in some format where my blind friend can say, "Alexa, play the next episode of (radio show here)" and Alexa will do it. Is there a way to do this? I'm not very tech-savvy so simple methods are appreciated!

posted by Ursula Hitler to Technology (10 answers total)

As a totally blind person, gently, I have to ask if there's no other method you could use for this.

It should be possible to load the shows onto an MP3 player or the like. Do they have an iOS device or other tech? I am pretty sure you need something like that to pair the Alexa, if I'm not mistaken. It just seems like that could be a bit more straight-forward.

I don't use my Alexa personally for this kind of thing and am unfamiliar with the format it requires, however. I just want to suggest other possibilities.
posted by Alensin at 4:48 PM on June 2, 2023

A lot of old radio shows are also on the Internet Archive and from there you can just download a pile of MP3s, which I expect will be easier to work with than YouTube.
posted by rustcellar at 4:50 PM on June 2, 2023 [1 favorite]

I understand you want to do this as a gift, which might mean that a surprise is nice, but I still suggest asking your friend what formats are convenient.

My friend who is also blind was used to ordering books on tape, and has the hardware to play them still on hand, so for him, recording them onto cassettes would be a simple way to do this privately that doesn't involve a big company's scrutiny. Your friend might have tech that you're not aware of. Are you sure your friend can't play CDs? Even if you burn audio CDs instead of data CDs?
posted by fritley at 4:56 PM on June 2, 2023 [1 favorite]

I once looked into seeing if I could get Alexa to stream an unlisted radio stream- ie something I'd cooked up myself for myself- and the answer was basically that you can't, short of developing your own Alexa app/"skill" yourself, and publishing it.
posted by BungaDunga at 5:46 PM on June 2, 2023

I think you can ask Alexa to play from a Dropbox folder. Your local librarian should know how to do this.
posted by cda at 8:06 PM on June 2, 2023

There are some Alexa skills that play OTR e.g. "Alexa, open Radio Fun Time" -- not sure what shows you have in mind, but they might be there.
posted by credulous at 8:56 PM on June 2, 2023

Response by poster: Cda, I will look into the Dropbox thing. That sounds promising, as something I could possibly set up. For the other suggestions, I gotta say that I'm asking this question after years of frustration trying to make other formats work for my friend. If it can't be played using Alexa, it just ain't getting played. Things are also complicated by the fact that I'm on a PC and my friend uses a Mac phone and Mac tablet. They do everything through Alexa or Siri commands. I'm just trying to get them some files they can actually listen to, but it's been a long, tough process.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 10:08 PM on June 2, 2023

Perhaps this will help.
posted by LOOKING at 7:37 AM on June 3, 2023

Also, there are a lot of Old Radio Shows at this site, to download if that helps.
posted by LOOKING at 8:08 AM on June 3, 2023

I've been using Fourble for a while. It might be a simple solution. "You can use Fourble to make a public or private podcast from audio files that you've found or uploaded somewhere else online - it's particularly well suited to archive_dot_org."
posted by isagleamingwhirlwind at 9:06 PM on July 23, 2023 [1 favorite]