Our Story

As a publishing and accessibility leader in Australia during the 1980s, Tom Treseder was deeply aware that billions of people around the world could not easily access printed materials because of literacy barriers or visual impairment. Motivated by a passion for accessibility, Tom began exploring how emerging technology could help deliver audio content to people in more practical and inclusive ways.

Thousands of audio cassettes and records were distributed to remote regions. The response from oral learners was encouraging, but widespread equipment failures created ongoing challenges.

Tape recorders, cassettes, and record players struggled to survive harsh environments. Tapes froze in cold climates and deteriorated in tropical heat. Sand and dust damaged mechanical components. “It was incredibly frustrating,” Tom recalls. “Every machine we sent out was eventually going to fail. And it took more than a dozen cassettes just to carry one large audio collection.”

Technology in the 1980s simply wasn’t built for difficult field conditions. When Tom suggested the idea of an audio player without moving parts, engineers told him it wasn’t possible. But he didn’t give up. Instead, he and fellow innovators began imagining a radically new type of audio player.

One day in 1988, while visiting a car dealership, Tom heard a car speak through a built-in memory chip. The moment sparked a breakthrough idea: if vehicles could deliver spoken audio digitally, why couldn’t a durable portable device do the same?

Inspired by that experience, Tom sketched the first concept for what would become the world’s first solar-powered audio player — a device designed to be affordable, durable, easy to navigate, and accessible to people regardless of literacy or vision ability.

With the vision on paper, Tom soon met Ken Crowell, an American engineer with deep technical expertise. Businessman J. Rudolf Geigy later joined the effort, helping transform the concept into reality. Together, the three pioneers would help create the world’s first solar-powered audio player platform.

Today, Tom and his wife Merriel continue to live in Australia, partnering with organizations around the world to expand access to multilingual audio content.