[kacir]

Originally Posted by Carnyx

I was quite interested in the Nook, because of the touchscreen and possibly the colour version, but the B&N auto-reply saying books unavailable via their website in the UK put me off. I guessed this meant that books wouldn't be downloadable via 3G, but please correct me if I'm wrong on that.

Well, there are many, many places to get the books from.

• One very obvious source is - buying the books from the company that provided the reading device, such as Kindle or Nook or Sony. This is also THE most hassle free way. Especially on Kindle. Difficulty in obtaining books this way varies for different devices.
• Other one is to borrow the books from Library - this is mostly for USA users. If you have somebody that lives and pays taxes in USA, he could get a membership card for this user.
• You can also buy books elsewhere - like from Amazon - and strip the DRM protection. Once set-up, this can be as easy as clicking one button in Calibre
• There are also may places that sell books without DRM. Like Baen or Smashwords
• If you just want to read and to be entertained and you do not insist on particular author - there are many lifetimes worth of reading available *legally* and easily on the net. You just have to search for it a bit. This wouldn't work if said person just HAD to have the newest James Patterson (just an example) novel. This also requires said person to be profficient in using computer and internet, or a good "technical support". Just scroll to the top of this very page and click on E-Books link. You can find huge number of lovingly formatted Public Domain (and otherwise legally available) books there. We also have Wiki (look at the very top of this page) and there you can find following page https://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/Free_eBooks. This wiki page lists large number of sources for free books. You can prepare and SD card for non-technical user with a thousand books and send it by mail, or upload it for "technical support" to load on an SD card. This can be several years worth of reading. Be careful. Not all devices have an SD card slot. (*)
• There are many books available at what is sometimes improperly called "the darknet". I list this here only for the sake of completeness of this list. Mobileread is not a good place to get advice in this direction.
  Please note that in many places (or, to be precise jurisdictions) it is *not* illegal to download copyrighted works. Only uploading is illegal almost everywhere. I do not want to start yet another flamewar here, I am listing it just for the sake of completeness ;-) .

(*) I personally grew up on Library books, so I am an opportunist. When you come to library, and especially when you are a heavy library user (that means you have already read the easily accessible "good stuff") you just browse shelves with your favorite genre and the pile of the most recently returned books to get something - anything interesting to read. With e-books I [usually] look just for something good to read and I do not insist on particular book or author. If you (or said person) have the same attitude you do not need to worry about being able to buy books.

Originally Posted by Carnyx

That said, a lot of people are saying touchscreen isn't so good, so I'm wondering whether to still go for touchscreen now.

There are several types of [hand] disability.
One is, that you have no coordination in hands, but still some strength. In this case touchscreen is not a good choice. You need buttons that are as big and as sturdy as possible.
Other type of disability is that the person does have sufficient coordination, but lacks strength. In this case the touch interface is great, because you only need to touch the screen very, very lightly.

Originally Posted by Carnyx

While I appreciate the time you've taken to check that out and it's an interesting possibility, I think I'll be avoiding the hacking/jailbreaking route - not for any ethical reason or corporate affiliation or anything like that(!) - but simply because from personal experience I know this can lead to unforeseen problems down the line which require ad hoc maintenance, or even a new device, which of course is not covered because you invalidated the guarantee, bla bla bla. So I'm aiming to keep it as simple and hassle-free as possible for her as she's got enough problems without bluescreens and errors to deal with!

Yes, this would be difficult and technically challenging to setup, and would require support, but I had two things in mind:
- this thread will be read by other people who might have similar problem as you have and
- sometimes there is no way that the person with the problem could operate any reader in "out of box" state due to more severe handicap.

If I was solving problem for such person, I would probably take PocketBook reading device, void warranty by taking it apart and solder wires for big, comfortable external buttons for operating the device where tiny switches are normally connected on printed circuit board. I would mount the device on the board and then mount nice, big external buttons on the same board. You can even connect another button for "next page" on cable, so the disabled person could take the most comfortable position while turning pages, holding a kind of wired remote control. You could turn pages by moving a head slightly or blowing into a tube, or something.

External USB keyboard is an interesting solution, because you "only" need to jailbreak the device to install some drivers - you do not leave visible traces of modification. And you do not need to modify device hardware in any way. So when the reader dies [from other case then bricking by botched firmware modification ;-) ] you can still claim the warranty.