[Darqref]

Why does every electronic manufacturer believe "Digital" is equivalent to "miniature"?

Two sample cases. MP3 players and TV remote controls.

My mother is legally blind, although she can see well enough to do lots of things. With a large enough TV screen, she can sorta make out the image and can certainly listen. The remotes driver her batty. There is a line of large, lighted remote controls, advertised in stores for assisted living, etc. They also have LOTS of buttons, and while large, those buttons are close together. Mom can't distinguish between them. There's another line of remotes that almost works - they have only six buttons, power, mute, channel up/down, volume up/down. Works great (except on our *other* TV, for which the standard remote signals don't work), except that again, the buttons are TOO CLOSE TOGETHER. She has trouble hitting only one, frequently manages to change a channel while trying to put mute on or off.

Lets have a remote that is both large AND simple. She already needs to hold it in one hand and press buttons with the other, so something the size of a book isn't too large. Make the buttons FAR APART. If there's enough distance between them, I can stick velcro labels to identify the correct buttons. Leave off all the stuff that tries to talk to multiple components (she frequently hits the button that makes the remote start talking to the dvd player, and then can't find hot to set it back. It waits for me to rescue it.)

She also likes to listen to audio books. For mobile uses, (ie, anything other than her bedroom or elswhere in the house where she can just listen to it on the main stereo) this currently means a cassette tape. I have yet to find ANY mp3 player that has a control which she can actually use. The least expensive ipod (the shuffle) is impossible to listen to an audio book on, since it scrambles the order of the tracks.... On others, the screens are so small that it's difficult to make sure what book and/or track you are on (for someone with vision problems anyway.) The power up sequence doesn't bring you to the point you left off, so you must figure out how to navigate to the correct spot. Most of the time, I think she'd even pick it up upside down.

I want an mp3 player that is the size of a cassette player, such as an old Sony Walkman. I want the controls to be Seperate buttons that can be identified by feel, far enough apart to make sure you will only hit one. Enough with this standard rocker button that imitates an iPod! And hey, the size might make it so that you can use larger batteries too. And make the power on come up to the same place it left off, so that the sequence is power, play, not power, choose, choose, etc, then finally play.

And for frosting on the cake, it would be nice if the thing stopped playing any time she falls asleep in the middle of the book. Maybe a setting that requires hitting play to advance to the next track in the playlist?