Until 1994, The talking book library of the National Association for the Hungarian Blind and Partially Sighted was not in the posession of a computer program providing more for the blind computer users than an itemized booklist of the talking book library. This circumstance brought us to the idea to develop a software that handles a comprehensive database in which the users can find brief reviews about the contents of those talking books and plus a few sentences about the style and the literary significance of the particular books. A further purpose of these reviews was to shape and improve the readers' literary taste, and to help them in choosing more valuable works to read.
This program known as "BROWSER" (Tallózó) among the blind users has been made by the collaboration of my husband Endre Csapo. He is a computer programmer.
We take care about the special needs of the visually impaired users, the Tallozó program primarily supports the BRAILAB-PC speaking adaptor which is widely used by the Hungarian blinds. However, at the same time, we aimed to yield a well-readable, perspecuous and easy-to-use surface combined with an aesthetical appearance for the sighted users and for the ones with low vision.
The current version of the database consists of 3060 reviews. Approx. 1400 ones of them can also be found on this homepage, plus 1650 extra rewiews about my long-time favorites, such books which are not yet available in talking book format (i.e. works about literary aesthetics, theory and philosophy).

The talking book library specializes in the following areas:

  • Literature for adults published in Hungarian language,
  • Literature for children and the youth published in Hungarian language,
  • General and special publications for professional use in Hungarian language,
  • Scientific and informative works for adults in Hungarian,
  • Mainly literary works discussed in the primary and secondary school education in Hungary.

Hereby I must say thank you to the "Soros" Foundation for sponsoring us to develop this browser program, and to Tamás Ungvári who attached his expertise to our submitted application packet.

Now I quote the last few lines of his expertise below:

"Although the 'BROWSER' is required to comply with the modest demands of the talking book library, it seems to be worthwhile to install this program on a major Internet server, as well."

If you have any questions related to this homepage or suggestions to make it better you can access me by sending an E-mail just now.

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