[Missouri-l] RNIB celebrates 75 years of Talking Books

[Denny Huff]

RNIB celebrates 75 years of Talking Books
Some 75m books on vinyl, cassette and now special compressed CD, have been
issued
free to more than 2 million people with sight problems
Mark Gould
The Guardian
, Wednesday 10 November 2010
Article history
Listening to Talking Books in the 1940s
A listener in the 1940s prepares to enjoy a RNIB Talking Book.
It was soldiers who lost their sight during the first world war and
complained that
learning to read using Braille was difficult that spurred the RNIB to come
up with
its Talking Book service. This week, the service celebrates its 75th
anniversary.
The first titles, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, by Agatha Christie, and
Typhoon, by
Joseph Conrad, recorded on 12-inch shellac gramophone records were sent out
by the
charity supporting blind and partially sighted people on 7 November1935.
The records played at 24 revolutions per minute, rather than the then
standard 75
rpm, so that 25 minutes of speech could be crammed on each side. Even so, a
typical
novel required 10 double-sided discs.
The Society of Authors and the Society of Publishers lent the service their
support
to avoid copyright problems and the Post Office granted cheap postage rates.
By September
1937, 966 specialist 24 rpm players had been sent out to readers with 42 new
titles
recorded.
Since then, around 75m books on vinyl, cassette and now special compressed
CD, have
been issued free to more than 2 million people. The most popular authors
include
JK Rowling, James Patterson, Agatha Christie, Danielle Steel, John Grisham
and Jodi
Picoult. Over the last 12 months Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel, Dear Fatty, by
Dawn
French, and How to Cheat at Cooking, by Delia Smith, were among the most
popular
listens.
A new talking book costs up to £2,500 to produce and there are around 18,000
titles
available. The charity charges an annual £79 subscription fee, which
includes the
special player required to listen to the extra-long CDs, for the £4m a year
service.
In many cases the fee is paid by local authorities via library services.
The RNIB works with publishers to widen the range of titles on offer but
just 5%
of books are available with added audio instructions and information for
blind people.
The RNIB says relations with publishers are getting better but few give the
charity
audio files in advance so it can convert them to talking book format. A
notable exception
is the Harry Potter series which it can release as talking books
simultaneously.
Lee Garrett, a keyboard player who has the degenerative eye condition
retinitis pigmentosa,
was introduced to talking books aged seven. "It was very important I kept up
with
all my friends and that I knew about the books they were talking about," he
says.
Now 43, Garrett says the service caters for every taste, unlike the days
when there
was a lack of "racy" content. "The RNIB seemed to think we shouldn't be
reading books
with adult content – why shouldn't we read Lady Chatterley's Lover? The
sighted community
isn't censored like that."
He listens to fantasy, sci-fi, thrillers and educational titles as he is
studying
law. Garrett says publishers should do more but praises those that work with
the
RNIB. "We used to wait ages for audios now we get [some] new releases on the
same
day as sighted readers."
• To support the Talking Book service visit
rnib.org.uk
Print this Printable version
Send to a friend

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://moblind.org/pipermail/missouri-l_moblind.org/attachments/20101111/3b96cb35/attachment.html>