By: Joe Strupp As newspapers look to expand audiences for their products, they may be missing a growing demographic: the blind. Since it started its Newsline telephone newspaper service in 1996, the National Federation of the Blind (NFB) estimates that some 40,000 blind or visually impaired "readers" are using the service each day.
Newsline has grown to 97 papers in the past year, with
The Christian Science Monitor and the
Mobile (Ala.)
Register among the most recent converts, according to Maurice Peret, program manager for Newsline, who is blind himself.
The free service, which operates through donations, is available to anyone with a touch-tone phone. Users dial 1-888-882-1629, punch in a security code issued to them upon registration, and choose from among any of the newspapers, which include the
Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, USA Today, and
The Wall Street Journal.
Using the touch-tone system, callers can access any article from the current issue, the previous day's issue, and the most recent Sunday paper. A computer-generated voice reads it to them over the phone. There are no limits on the amount of time spent on the service or number of stories that can be accessed.
"It began as a way to have blind people be able to read the paper and not have it be outdated," said Pat Maurer, NFB director of community relations, explaining the service's benefits over older Braille papers. "The synthesized speech was available and we decided to do it through the telephone, since not everyone has a computer." Newsline receives each newspaper's daily electronic edition every morning through a special electronic feed, then transforms it into a computer-activated voice. The entire edition of each paper, excluding display ads, is available.
The act of "reading" newspapers through Newsline is quite different than picking up a copy or surfing a Web edition. Hearing that electronic voice repeat Senator John Kerry's vows to offer middle class tax cuts makes one think of the HAL 9000 computer from
2001: A Space Odyssey. "We did it as just a good thing for the community, not expecting any huge return on it," said Steve Auerweck, news technology director for
The Sun in Baltimore, one of the original five Newsline papers. Auerweck said the paper receives no revenue or circulation advantage from the service, which he said costs very little to produce.
Knight Ridder boosted Newsline's newspaper numbers significantly when it signed on all of its 32 daily papers last December.
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