Radio Reading Services

September 24, 2003 7:14 PM

The IAAIS othersise known as "Radio Reading Services. Policy Statement: Everyone with a visual impairment, physical disability or learning disability has a right to equal access to all forms of information available to the general public. IAAIS works actively to promote and protect this access.

More inside.
posted by ashbury (4 comments total)

Radio reading services are typically broadcast on a subcarrier channel of an FM radio station. Listeners must have a special, pre-tuned radio receiver to pick up the closed circuit broadcast. Receivers are frequently loaned to listeners by the reading service at no cost.

Maybe you know somebody who could benefit from this kind of service.
posted by ashbury at 7:15 PM on September 24, 2003

Yeah, me! There's many a time that I'd like some non-music radio other than news or call-ins. Not really need, though, I guess know, but I wonder -- if I volunteered maybe they'd let me borrow a radio?
posted by Utilitaritron at 8:12 PM on September 24, 2003

Sometimes local cable companies use a similar service to provide sound over their information channel(s). The thing that I always notice is how slowly the narrator speaks. I know their aim is to be a service to people with a broad range of disabilities, but that unfortunately makes it unbearably slow for most blind people who are used to synthesized computer voices that they can speed right up to nearly a buzz and still understand it. But that's something that requires a bit more personalization. Perhaps making the audio files available over the net and allowing people to run them at whatever speed / pitch they prefer would be useful. There is, after all, much to be said for having a person read to you instead of a computer.
posted by Space Coyote at 8:44 PM on September 24, 2003

Thanks for posting this, ashbury.
It is wonderful that the receivers are frequently loaned to listeners... at no cost. Many people feel they are as restricted by finances as they are by their health problems.

As a slight aside. According to 1991 data, sixteen percent of our population lives with a disability: that's astounding. I read somewhere the average person will spend approximately ten years of their life with a disability.
posted by philfromhavelock at 8:59 PM on September 24, 2003