Hi,
I recently purchased a yoto player for my grandma, who has dementia, in hopes of giving her the ability to listen to stories. She used to read every night, for years, before bed but when her cognition began to decline she wasn't able to comprehend what she was reading which deterred her from ever opening a book again. Goodbye John Grisham.
Your player is fascinating and there aren't any audio book players for the elderly that can be used with such ease like your product has the potential of doing. I thought the device would be much simpler, before I purchased it, but there are quite a few necessities that would render the Yoto unusable by my grandma alone. Since I bought it for my grandma but it's made for children the learning curve is a bit steep (too many buttons, an app to download, having to be in proximity with the app as well as having wifi).
I am emailing because I was curious to see if ever you would create a line of Yoto players simplified to just a charger, a button/dial for only sound and higher level books to insert (my grandma has dementia but she knows what's below her level of education and I don't want to demean her with a child's book) so they can be used as audio book players without all the flare (ie. kindles, phones, tablets, etc.) for those with memory issues; it's possible the simplicity could even be alluring to parents that don't want to download another app and to kids that don't want to ask their parents for their phones to play a certain story, song, sleep sound, etc. Think Disney Read-Along books on cassette (easy to use). This could also bring back a lot of autonomy within the dementia community (and perhaps even improve memory) since all they would have to do is put a card into the player, adjust one button for volume and it would automatically play (being plugged in would be the only power source so no need to add another button to turn on and off). Hello John Grisham.
Anyway, I thought I'd reach out to get a feeler going because I personally can use your product, with some ease (even for a millenial there is a bit of extras I could do without to make it simpler), but my grandma, and potentially a child who doesn't grow up with a phone attached to their butt, wouldn't know how to utilize it without assistance and there seems to be potential for a market by merely simplifying the Yoto to the mere basics. If ever this becomes an option I most definitely would purchase, again, and even have my grandma be the guinea pig for it.
Of course there would be some troubleshooting needed (ie. without the app or extra buttons you can't go back or forward in stories by chapter).