All the news that's fit to read: Carl Kandel, retired music department chair, and Andrea Dzavik, associate director of sales at the University Press of Florida, read from The Gainesville Sun. (Photo by David Zentz)
Hearing is
believing
College’s radio service
gives eyes to the blind
Judy Hamilton has limited vision in her right eye. She’s able to see just a few feet in front of her. She has only light perception in her left eye. Still, she was recently captivated by a story in The Gainesville Sun about security guards using stun guns to break up a fight at a local nightclub.
Hamilton listens to the College’s WUFT-FM Radio Reading Service, which broadcasts readings of newspapers, books and magazines to blind and visually impaired people. Recorded in Weimer Hall, it’s a sideband of Classic 89’s main channel.
Broadcasts are received via a special radio receiver obtained once a medical professional certifies a listener’s condition. Started in 1992, the service has 600 listeners in Alachua and Gilchrist counties as well as Lake City, Ocala and Palatka.
About 40 volunteers, half of them students, prepare 50 hours of original weekly programming. A typical newspaper reading features two volunteers reading articles from different papers. On weekday mornings from 8 to 10, they read from The Gainesville Sun, the Ocala Star-Banner, The Florida Times-Union and the Orlando Sentinel.
Original programming is supplemented with broadcasts from the Minnesota Talking Book, which provides programming for radio reading services across the nation. The Radio Reading Service broadcasts 24 hours a day.
Steven Roberts, an accounting major, volunteered for the service after seeing it advertised at a volunteer fair. He reads “Florida Watch” on Monday through Friday and newspapers on Fridays, as well.
“It’s a way I can help the community,” Roberts said. “[It caters to] people who don’t have something we take for granted.”
Hamilton has been using the service since 1992, and through the years has had only one complaint. “Because of space and time constraints, they have to cut the story,” she said. “It limits your access to information.”
Hamilton’s impaired vision resulted from being born three months prematurely. She’s able to use aids such as closed-circuit televisions and magnifications, but said they “tend to slow you down.” The radio service has made getting information “less of a struggle.”
