The Talking Newspaper for Todmorden
-Providing information for the blind, visually impaired and associated individuals and their helpers-
This website contains the monthly publication of news and information from the Todmorden area. The website when fully operational will update just after the middle of each month.
The information on the website is created by volunteer citizens “playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing, and disseminating news and information”.
Who are we and what do we do?
We are a local voluntary organisation which provides recordings of items from the Todmorden News and other material free of charge to people with visual disability. Our constitution says that our object is “to relieve blind or partially sighted people, or those labouring under some temporary or permanent incapacity or disability which makes reading a strain, by the provision of recorded audio material including local news and other items of interest and information.”
Once each month we record a digest of articles from the Todmorden News in the preceding weeks, together with a magazine section consisting of interviews with interesting local people, a quiz, poetry readings and various other items of local interest. The final section of each edition is a selection of briefings giving information about products, services or welfare issues of particular relevance to blind and partially sighted people.
Listening to this material
Anyone is welcome to listen to this material online and to publicise it to other people.
If you are visually disabled and are happy to listen online just continue to do so. Alternatively, you may prefer to receive the talking newspaper on a memory stick posted to you monthly, as described below.
Similarly, anyone who is a relative or carer of a visually disabled person can arrange for them to receive the memory stick.
To contact the Talking Newspaper to request any of these services, fill in the form on our contact page here.
How will we get this memory stick to you?
Using a free facility provided by Royal Mail we post the memory stick to you in a special packet with a reversible label. When you have finished listening to it, anytime within the next three weeks, you reverse the label and put it in the post to return to us for re-use next time.
How will you listen to this?
We provide free of charge a simple to operate memory stick player, operated by mains adaptor or battery. If you already have a computer or another audio system which accepts memory sticks you can of course use that instead of our separate player.
How long does it take to listen to the material on the stick?
This varies depending on the amount of news and magazine material, but typically the news section and magazine last for about an hour each plus 30 minutes for the information briefings. However, you don’t have to listen to it all at once, the news items, magazine articles and information briefings are all on separate tracks and using the player you can stop and start again at the same track, go back to the beginning, or fast forward.