Background

We have been in existence since March 1982. We started by using cassettes.  A volunteer, working from home, read articles from the Buxton Advertiser and recorded their voice on to a cassette recorder.  With the cassette ready they met with the leader in his spare room where they copied the cassette and sent out the audio-recording to the listeners in special pouches.

 

That team ceased production in December 2001 and we took over in March 2002.  We learned how the system worked, advertised for new volunteers, found premises and sent out our first edition to 120 listeners at Christmas that year.  We continued with twelve volunteers working on a monthly rota.  As cassette recorders became less reliable in 2009 we started recording to cds too.  We now had twenty volunteers.  Eventually we were just using cds and as technology progressed so did we.  Memory sticks were used much more.  We bought new equipment, learned a new system, added three podcasts from RNIB and in May 2015 we changed to recording to memory sticks.  We changed premises in 2015 and all now work under one roof. Sadly, our listener numbers started to decrease. News was more widely available on the internet.

In January 2016 we produced our first bi-monthly magazine. This is a longer publication (6-8 hours) and provides a greater variety of material.  It includes readings from several local publications, including Derbyshire Life, Pure Peak, quizzes, recipes, short stories, interviews and podcasts with material of interest to blind and partially sighted people.  

 

By 2017 we were able to make our audio-recordings available to a wider range of listeners by an app, which is a joint venture between British Wireless for the Blind and the Talking News Federation.  Our service is available on the web here.