Okay bookworms, this is the chapter you’ve been waiting for. It’s all about immersive reading — that level of reading that is fast and comfortable enough to allow you to lose yourself in the flow of the narrative.

And that means books. Not newspapers, not magazines — books. (Yes, there are sometimes narratives that are in column format, but overwhelmingly the desire for immersion is associated with reading books).

And books are hard for low vision rehab because of the text line-length is long, going all the way across the page. As we saw in the previous chapter, longer lines present greater practical challenges than shorter lines.

Because it’s so hard to achieve, immersive reading is kind of the holy grail of low vision rehabilitation. So… let’s get on with the quest!

These are the essential ingredients for a low vision aid that can work for reading books. Anything that doesn’t meet these criteria just isn’t going to be viable.

The magnifier has to provide an image with enough magnification, illumination and contrast to be able to see the letters comfortably.

Seeing individual letters comfortably often isn’t enough. If your macular field integrity is impaired, you’ll need more than the standard reserve amount of magnification to see the words properly. It might be quite a lot more, so this is a very major factor.

Mostly, the key factor in having a high top speed is avoiding the need to move the magnifier or book side-to-side, since that really makes it hard to maintain fluency. And that means choosing a magnifier with the widest-possible field of view, or one that simply reformats the text instead.

This is a major point of tension: on the one hand, you need enough magnification to see the words well enough to allow fluent reading. But on the other, you also need a device with a high-enough top speed — which basically means enough field of view to fit in the entire line of text. That’s not too hard when the magnification needed is low, but the higher your magnification demand gets, the fewer the devices available that meet the speed requirement.

It needs to be a device that you have the strength to hold or move. If it’s handheld, you need to be able to hold both the magnifier and the book steady enough. You need to be able to use it without causing serious ergonomic discomfort (back or neck pain, for instance). And you need to be able to use it where you need to use it — for instance, a desktop magnifier won’t be a workable option if you’re bed-bound or chair-bound.

Higher tech devices like iPads and text-to-speech devices can have quite a steep learning curve. If you have trouble with picking up new skills, that could be a barrier. One of the nice things about optical magnifiers and glasses is that they are very simple and intuitive.

The reality is that many of the higher-tech magnifiers can be very expensive. That doesn’t mean they aren’t good value for money, since they can have a really big impact on your quality of life. But you might need to enquire about second-hand items, or find out whether there are funding options or whether you can hire the device instead of buying it.

On the other hand, optical magnifiers are relatively cheap. Even eReaders and tablets can be quite affordable — especially if you buy second-hand, or perhaps get a family member’s old one.

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Good Low-Powered Magnifiers for Reading Books

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Here, I’m considering magnification levels up to about 3x. If you only need that nice low level of magnification, you’re in luck — you have quite a few good possible options for reading books. Let’s work through them.

Magnifier lamp

This is a gimme. I wrote in the previous section of my love for magnifier lamps, and they are our most-prescribed item in the Low Vision Clinic. There are all sorts of ways that they can be helpful.

Thinking specifically of their use when reading books, the main points in favour are:

• They provide a wide field of view.
• They give great illumination.
• Really high top speed — in my tests, I was able to read my book at a fast-fluent rate (in fact, almost the same rate as I normally achieve).
• They can sit right by your favourite chair or next to your bed.
• They leave both hands free to hold the book.
• They’re relatively cheap (the one we prescribe costs under AU$150, as of writing in mid-2025).

Limitations:

• They’re really only helpful when you need only a low level of magnification. Once you need stronger magnification, you need to find something else. I mean, you can get stronger magnifier lamps (a bit stronger at least), but they aren’t nearly so well suited anyway because their field of view gets very small.

Low-powered illuminated handheld magnifier

I featured the Mobilux LED 3.5x (which is actually a 2.5x) in my chapter on favourite magnifiers for spot reading. It’s a great all-rounder, providing you have the arm/hand strength for holding both the book and the magnifier steady, one in each hand, for a long enough time. That’s a big ask though, I think most people would get tired well before they’d normally be feeling they’d read enough.

And the top speed with low-powered handhelds is pretty good, but not nearly as good as with a magnifier lamp. In my tests I managed to read fluently with it, but that was well below my normal fast-fluent rate.

Again, once you need stronger than this level of magnification, you need to start looking for something else. Field of view becomes really limiting above this power.

Extra-strong reading glasses

As we’ve discussed earlier, if you want stronger reading glasses, you have to be prepared to hold the book closer — the stronger the glasses, the closer the book has to come. You can always have stronger, at least until the book reaches your nose.

With regard to fast-fluent reading of books, extra-strong reading glasses can be a good option, at least at the lower levels of magnification. In my test, I was able to keep up a fluent (even approaching fast-fluent) reading speed with a pair of 2.5x prism reading glasses, certainly better than with the handheld magnifier. (Note that these were 2.5x, not +2.5 glasses — without wanting to get too technical 2.5x is actually four times as strong as +2.5, with a close reading focus of 10cm (four inches) from my eyes).

The standout benefit of glasses is that they have a very wide field of view, because the lens is right in front of your eye (it’s the ‘porthole principle’ taken to the extreme). The glasses should have prism to help the eyes feel comfortable looking so close and to keep the benefit of both eyes working together.

Ergonomic considerations are important in determining if very strong reading glasses would be a viable option for you. A benefit is that you get to hold the book with two hands, but holding the book closer than usual for a long period can be very tiring on the arms and shoulders. And you need to be able to hold the book quite steady.

A key point to remember is that it’s really important to carefully position yourself and the book so that you’re getting good light on the page — as the book position comes closer, it gets harder to avoid your head putting the page in shadow.

Desktop CCTV video magnifiers

These are a great choice for reading books at low levels of magnification. You have to be prepared to sit at a desk or table, and of course you have to be able to afford to buy one. But there are particularly strong advantages that give it a top speed that is effectively unlimited (in my test I was able to read at my natural full fast-fluent rate at levels of magnification all the way up to 5x).

• Very wide field of view. At low magnification you should easily fit an entire page width into the screen width, so all you need to do is slide the page vertically to read. And the whole field is binocular.
• Very steady image, especially if you use a model with an XY sliding table for the book to sit on.
• You can enhance the contrast, or even reverse it. For some people this makes a huge difference.
• They are simple. Many have just two main controls — magnification and contrast. There are other models that have all sorts of extra features, but sometimes it’s best to stick with something simple.

Even though desktop CCTV video magnifiers are expensive, they do have the advantage that they will remain useful even if your vision gets a lot worse over time, which is a significant consideration if you have a progressive condition. Sure, it might reach a point where you can’t read books with them, but if you do reach that point then they will still be able to provide excellent high-magnification spot reading, which is extremely important for maintaining independence and safety at home.

eBooks on tablets (iPads, Kindles, etc)

I love them. These are amazingly good for immersive reading. I was able to keep up a full fast-fluent reading speed on a tablet at all lower magnification levels. Even with very large screen on a smartphone (so large there were only two lines of text on the screen), I was still able to keep up a fast-fluent reading rate (you just need to be constantly tap-tap-tapping the screen to keep the pages turning rapidly).

Some advantages:

• Contrast enhancement, and pick the font you find most comfortable.
• Level four magnification — the text is formatted and paginated. No more scrolling, not even vertically! Just tap to turn the page.
• You can choose the magnification that provides the perfect balance between making the words easy to see and still maximising the number of words per page.
• Use them anywhere you could use a book, and take it with you — in your comfy chair, in bed, in the dentist’s waiting room.
• Generally lightweight, and one device can hold many books.

The downsides:

• You need to get the book in electronic format — it’s not helpful for reading a physical book (yes, you can use it as a type of portable CCTV video magnifier, but it has all the limitations noted above).
• There’s some complexity in learning how to use one. They’re not super-complex though, so I think the effort is worth it.

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Here I’m thinking of powers from about 4x up to 6x. This is a level where optical magnifiers are becoming much more difficult to handle — still fine for spot reading, but not at all suitable for really fluent reading. And the high magnification is pushing the boundaries of even the very wide field of view of electronic video magnifiers.

Handheld optical magnifiers, magnifier lamps

No, not really. The field of view with optical lenses at this power is small and you have to use it with just one eye, which really limits the reading rate. In my speed test I was able to achieve 170 words-per-minute with a 5x handheld illuminated magnifier, but it was quite fatiguing, and 170wpm isn’t really that fluent anyway, more like high-medium. On top of that they have significant ergonomic difficulties, so they’re slow(ish) and also uncomfortable — not a promising combination, unless you’re very determined.

Extra-strong reading glasses

This is the only optical magnification option that has much of a chance of allowing comfortable, fluent reading, because the limitations of lenses are really starting to bite.

Once we start needing these higher levels of magnification, it becomes too hard to use prism to keep the two eyes working together, so you need to switch to glasses that use just one eye and leave the other blurry. The focus position is much closer — for instance, 5x will focus at only 5cm (2 inches) away from your eye.

That close position can be hard on the arms, but what’s really hard is holding the book steady enough to keep the words in focus, because the depth of field is very narrow and even tiny movements will make the focus fluctuate. In the lower magnification section I explained that I was able to read with good fluency using 2.5x reading glasses (with a focus at 10cm, 4 inches). In contrast, that dropped to barely fluent with 5x. Putting exact figures on it, my reading speed dropped from 250 words per minute to 180. I mean, 180 wpm is not terrible, but it’s only half my natural reading speed, and was getting quite borderline for a sense of reading fluently. (It still felt more comfortable than the 5x handheld magnifier though).

Desktop CCTV video magnifiers

Still a great option! Note in the speed test I was still able to read at my full fast-fluent reading rate (375 wpm) even at 5x magnification. That’s essentially unlimited, a great result.

But at that point we’re approaching the limits of ‘level two’ magnification — that is, where an enhanced image of the page is displayed on the screen. At a certain point, the line of text is magnified too much to fit across the screen all in one go, so you have to start sliding the book side-to-side, and as soon as that happens it slows you down.

The exact level of magnification where you hit that problem depends on how wide book’s page is relative to the width of the magnifier’s screen. For the book I was using in the speed tests, the break point came at 6x — as soon as I started needing to do that side-to-side movement my reading rate dropped markedly, from 375wpm to 250wpm.

Now, 250wpm is still good, still quite fluent. But it was a noticeable drop, and the side-to-side movement also felt a bit uncomfortable. And as you’ll see in the next section, as you need even higher magnification that means even more side-to-side, which means every increase in magnification brings a further decrease in fluency.

Once you reach the point where you can’t fit the whole line in the screen width, every increase in magnification brings a further decrease in fluency.

Desktop CCTV video magnifiers (reformatting)

It’s around this point that the CCTV models that have text-to-speech functionality really start to show their advantage.

Sure, they can speak the text, which is pretty cool and neatly subverts the reading fluency issue. But many people don’t like the synthetic voices, and this section is all about being able to read it yourself, so the real significance of the technology is that it can display the text reformatted into a single column at whatever level of magnification you like. My reading speed was fast-fluent over the whole of the medium magnification range.

The particular model I used was the Humanware Prodigi Desktop with a 20 inch screen. It’s since been discontinued, but there are many similar devices available, such as the Optelec Clearview Speech, and the Freedom Scientific Topaz OCR. Watch for words like Speech, TTS, Text-to-Speech and OCR (optical character recognition) in the description.

You still want to get the widest screen you can, because the wider the screen the more words it can display across the line, and the less frequently you’ll need to scroll the column.

You also definitely need to try before you buy. The CCTVs with speech tend to be a bit less intuitive to use, so you need to make sure that it’s easy enough to get that lovely column of text, otherwise you’re just not going to enjoy using it.

eBooks on tablets (iPads, Kindles, etc)

eBooks are still going strong at moderate magnification. Tablets work well held at the same distance you’d normally hold a book — they’re like the world’s best large print book. I was able to keep up a very good fast fluent reading speed using a tablet with very large print (6x) at a normal reading distance, or with medium sized print (3x) at a closer (20cm, 8 inches) reading distance (along with appropriate glasses to keep the screen in focus). Overall, I preferred the tablet at the normal reading distance and tapping the page very frequently.

And I was even able to read with good fluency using a smartphone held close (20cm). It wasn’t as fast as using a tablet, but still really quite acceptable.

All the advantages and disadvantages listed in the low-magnification section apply here, so I won’t repeat them.

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This means powers from about 7x up to 12x.

Now, that’s a lot. Think of an average-sized paperback book magnified by ten times — it goes from about 20cm (8 inches) tall to an image that’s 2 metres (almost seven feet) tall. So even the very largest screen magnifiers can show only a small amount of the line at one time.

This is where reformatting (levels three and four magnification) really shines.

Optical magnifiers

No. Just, no. They’re fine for spot reading, but properly fluent reading just isn’t possible with any of the optical magnification options. The closest you’ll get is with a pair of ultra-high-strength glasses, but there are so many practical difficulties it gets impossible to maintain high speed. In my speed tests I used a pair of 8x reading glasses, which focuses (just one eye) at about 3cm (less than 1.5 inches) away. It’s extraordinarily difficult to get the page well illuminated at that position, and the depth of field is so minimal that even tiny tremors make the print go in and out of focus. On top of that, the movement from the end of the line to the beginning of the next line is quite challenging.

Desktop CCTV video magnifiers

These were really great at the medium levels of magnification, but there’s that point where you can’t fit the whole line in the width of the screen, and that’s where it gets hard. Once you need to start scrolling side-to-side, the potential reading speed really comes down rapidly as magnification increases.

In my test I was using a standard-sized paperback, and the magnifier had a 24 inch screen — about as large as they get. I mentioned above that my reading rate started slowing when I started using 6x, and once I hit 10x magnification my rate had dropped right down to 122 words-per-minute, which is barely even medium speed.

Desktop CCTV video magnifiers (reformatting)

In contrast to the standard desktop CCTV, I was still easily able to read with fast-fluency up to about 8x using the Prodigi Desktop, which gave me a very convenient reformatted column of text.

With the column, the scrolling is only vertical. It’s still not perfect, because as magnification goes up you can’t fit as many words on the screen, so you need to scroll the column up more and more frequently. Even so, I was still reading fluently (205 wpm) at 10x magnification, which was markedly better than the desktop CCTV’s 122 wpm.

eBooks on tablets (iPads, Kindles, etc)

While the level one and two magnifiers have fallen by the wayside, and even the level threes are starting to struggle, the level four magnifiers are still going strong. Even at 12x magnification I was able to read a fluent 240 wpm, which is quite remarkable. And (bonus!) I was able to sit in my favourite chair while I was doing it!

A few notes on that.

• It needed to be held close, and that means having some stronger glasses with prism to keep the focus and convergence comfortable at that screen distance. In my test, I had the tablet on very large print (6x) and held it close at 20cm (8 inches), with appropriate reading glasses. The tablet itself is no heavier than a paperback, so it was comfortable to hold there for an extended period.
• When you’re using higher levels of magnification, it’s much better to hold the tablet in landscape orientation rather than portrait (that is, the screen is wider than it is tall, the opposite of a normal book). The reason is that longer words format better that way.

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This means powers above about 12x magnification. Again, we’re talking about enormous images here. At 20x, your typical paperback page would stretch further than from floor to ceiling!

All types of magnifier

So, this is where our luck runs out. None of the level one, two or three or four magnifiers allowed anywhere close to fluent reading speeds (180+ words per minute).

There were some honourable mentions though. Unsurprisingly, they were all from the level 3 and 4 magnifiers.

With the Prodigi Desktop displaying maximum magnification (roughly 20x magnification), I was only getting about three lines of text showing on the screen, so perhaps 10 words per screen. Scrolling the column slowed me down a lot, but even so I was able to read at 112 wpm. When you think about it, that’s pretty impressive.

And using my eReader tablet at very large, held at 10cm (4 inches) away with very strong prism reading glasses, that combination worked out as 24x total magnification, and I was able to read 147 wpm, a truly astonishing speed for that level of magnification. It really underlines the benefit of pagination, rather than having to scroll the column.

Even though those results are remarkable, we have to acknowledge that they’re still not at that level we’d consider fluent. For some people that might be enough, if they are really determined to continue to read. If that’s you, more power to you. If it’s not, there is still the backup option of cheating.

Talking books

When all else fails, talking books will still be there. You can play the book files with a tablet or smartphone, but many people with more advanced vision loss like devices that are specifically designed for people who can’t see, like Humanware’s Victor Reader Stream or Victor Reader Stratus. And of course the various forms of voice-controlled home assistant devices from Apple, Google and Amazon can also play audio books.

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Pulling all of the above together, what’s best?

Of course, so much depends on your individual circumstances. In particular, at what level is your vision now, and do you have a condition that’s likely to get worse with time? You really need to carefully read though this whole site to make your best judgement of what’s right for you. And try before you buy!

Even so, I can give some general recommendations.

Look, magnifier lamps are great in all sorts of ways, and they are fairly cheap too. So you might as well have one. If your vision is still good enough that it gets you reading fluently then that’s fantastic. It’s not going to be enough if your vision gets significantly worse, but it will still be a useful device to have in the house for more general magnification tasks.

If you’re a bookworm and you’ve got a condition that is likely to get worse over time, the sooner you can get familiar and comfortable with using an eReader the better. The fact that they can work well all the way from normal vision to around 12x magnification means they are your single best chance at being able to stay a bookworm for life.

The best type of eReader is a tablet. Doesn’t matter if it’s an iPad or an Android tablet, whatever you can get is fine. Bigger screen is better, but make sure it’s not too heavy for you.

Many people say to me ‘Oh, that looks great — but I don’t need it yet. I’ll keep it in mind for later.‘ But that’s risky. Learning how to use an tablet when you have more serious vision loss is harder than learning it when your vision is still reasonably good. Even if you can still manage quite well with just a magnifier lamp, make sure you get in some practise by reading at least some of your books on a tablet.

And of course having a tablet means you can do all sorts of other great things as well — stream TV shows, do video calls, read emails, even read your local newspaper each day (delivered by wifi — you don’t even need to get out of bed!)

You don’t need the latest model tablet to read eBooks. Even an old one will do, so it should be a one-off cost. As time goes on you might need to invest in stronger glasses with prism to allow you to hold the tablet closer and closer, but again those are relatively minor costs, and will be useful in other ways themselves.

These are expensive, but they are extremely useful. Up to moderate levels of magnification they are very effective devices for reading books.

If your vision declines to a point where the CCTV stops being useful for reading, that’s also the level where it starts becoming extremely useful for the sorts of general magnification tasks that keep you safe and independent in your own home — things like reading essential correspondence, recipes, expiry dates on food packaging, the TV guide, and so on. So there’s unlikely to come a point where you don’t find it worth having.

Consider getting one that has text-to-speech functionality, which extends its usefulness if your vision does get much worse. This is another example of a skill that’s worth developing well before it becomes essential, as it’s just a lot easier to learn while you can still see what you’re doing.

Audio books have become a lot more popular in recent years. Lots of people have discovered that it can be rewarding to immerse themselves in a story while their eyes are otherwise occupied — while doing housework, gardening or driving for instance.

Listening to a story is something many of us experienced when we were children, being read stories by our parents or teachers before we learned to read. But once we were ourselves able to read books, the task of following a narrative become a visual task rather than an auditory task.

Most people are vision-dominant rather than audio-dominant, so many bookworms find it challenging to follow the narrative thread of an audio book, at least to begin with. But it’s a skill, like any other, and it’s not that hard to get used to it. Some tips:

• Don’t just sit — it’s too easy to drift off to sleep. Do some housework or other basic activity, or even just play solitaire or build a house of cards — anything that requires just enough attention that you don’t fall asleep, but not so much that it interferes with listening to the story. If something comes up in your activity that requires a bit more concentration, pause the story for a moment while you’re doing it.
• If you’re worried about bothering others with the sound of the book, invest in a set of headphones — bluetooth wireless frees you up to move around, but wired connections can be the simplest to deal with.
• Learn how to skip back a short amount — even when we’re reading a normal book, we skip back to reread bits at times, especially if they were surprising or complex. It’s important to be able to easily skip back in those cases, or if something distracted you like someone speaking to you or a knock at the door.
• When you resume the book after a while, skip back a minute or so to get back into the narrative flow.

Like eBooks, this is one of those situations where the challenge can be not so much the reading/listening to the book, but getting the book in the first place. So the discussion above about the benefits of having a ‘personal librarian’ applies to getting audio books too.

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Reading books is a major part of life satisfaction for some people. It’s an advanced skill, and it’s particularly prone to being impaired by even quite early vision impairment. It seems to me that it’s a problem that often isn’t fully understood, even by vision professionals, and that leaves a great many bookworms feeling frustrated.

I hope this whole section has gone some way to addressing that lack of understanding, and will guide people towards effective solutions.

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Next chapter is the first in a series on specific conditions. We’ll start with Macular Degeneration.