Blind or visually impaired? Unable to read through disability? How can you keep in touch with local news and activities?
South Bucks Talking News is a free service for people who have difficulty reading text. It is not necessary to be registered as blind to receive the newspaper. We are a registered charity, affiliated to the Talking Newspaper Federation.
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The Talking News Process
Editing
Every week, one of our Editors carefully select articles of interest for the upcoming issue. The content has an emphasis on items of local interest and consists of three main sections:
News – taken from local news sources, primarily the Bucks Free Press
Quiz – questions set at the end of each article, with answers at the end of the main news section – a very popular feature!
Magazine – with a varied selection of articles of interest from other journals, short stories, poems, and articles specifically for the blind and visually impaired from the Talking Newspaper Federation, RNIB, Macular Society etc.
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Production and Distribution
Our Readers meet with a Sound Recordist and Editor in the studio every Friday. Together they record the next edition of the Talking Newspaper.
On Saturday morning the recording is copied onto memory sticks using specialist USB copying machines. The Copyists then place the USB sticks into dedicated plastic envelopes which are posted to our Listeners. Royal Mail makes no charge to send the package to visually impaired people.
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Listening
Listeners can enjoy the latest edition of the Talking Newspaper by placing the memory stick in a computer or a USB player specially designed for the visually impaired. We can provide USB players for listeners at no charge.
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Returning
The memory stick is reusable, so after listening it is returned in the post in the same plastic envelope. The envelope has a two-sided address label in a clear plastic window, one side has the listeners address and the other has ours. Listeners need simply turn this label over when returning the envelope. Again, Royal Mail does not charge for this service.
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