The Radio Reading Service of Eastern North Carolina

252-633-5725 NEW BERN

252758-4683 GREENVILLE

The Radio Reading Service of Eastern North Carolina (RRSENC) is a volunteer-staffed, non-profit corporation serving people who are blind and print impaired in the central part of eastern North Carolina.
  Member I A A I S
 
Anticipated future program schedule
Map to our studio

 

Story about RRSENC President Barbara Hansen in October 25 New Bern, NC Sun Journal 

Photo by Byron Holland/Sun Journal

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

PURPOSE: We provide local news and other information to people of Eastern North Carolina who are blind, visually impaired, or physically challenged from reading printed materials in the usual manner.

METHOD OF SERVICE

The RRSENC is a radio station. A board of directors, composed of volunteers, oversees the planning and operation of the RRSENC.

Our signal is broadcast via Public Radio East, a public radio station with transmitters in several locations in central eastern North Carolina.

Our signal can only be heard with a special radio, tuned to our frequency. We purchase and provide these special radios to qualified listeners, who are unable to read conventional printed materials because of blindness or other visual, physical or learning disabilities.  

We can also be heard on the in-house TV systems of Pitt County Memorial Hospital in Greenville and Craven Regional Medical Center in New Bern.  Some of our programs are also carried on the Public Access Channel of the Suddenlink Cable System in Pitt County.

The RRSEC broadcasts twenty-four hours daily, seven days a week.  We have a studio in New Bern at the facilities of Public Radio East on the campus of Craven Community College and a studio in Greenville on the campus of the Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University.  Each day, volunteers come to our studios, clip out articles from local newspapers, and read the articles aloud on the radio.

VOLUNTEERS

The foundation upon which the Radio Reading Service operates is volunteer service. Readers for local broadcasts are drawn from over 60 volunteers, who may each contribute 50 to 150 hours of service per year. Training is provided. Reading usually takes 1½-2 hours per shift. People volunteer between 1 and 6 days per month. Visit our website or call us if you are interested in becoming a reader.

FACTS

ABOUT VISUAL IMPAIRMENT IN EASTERN NC

It is estimated that more than 15,200 people in eastern North Carolina suffer significant functional limitation in seeing print. There are 1991 individuals in this area who have been identified by the NC Division of Services for the Blind to be legally blind or visually impaired. There are many other persons who experience significant vision loss that are not registered with this state program.

Many people who reside in group settings such as assistived living facilities and nursing homes also suffer vision loss due to various physical problems. The organization, Prevention of Blindness USA, indicates that 2.65 % of a given population can be used to determine the number of individuals with debilitating vision impairment.

FUNDING

Our annual budget of approximately $26,000 is met through contributions from individuals, businesses, civic groups, charitable organizations or foundations, churches and fund-raising events. We receive no regular federal or state support.

Our contributors include The Greater Greenville Foundation, Craven Regional Medical Center, The Harold H. Bate Foundation, Craven Community Foundation, The Perkins Foundation, The Pitt County Board of Commissioners and area Lions Clubs.

We exist solely through the generous tax-deductible contributions of our donors.

DONATIONSPlease Send Your Tax Free Contribution To:THE RADIO READING SERVICE OF EASTERN NORTH CAROLINA PO Box 3274New Bern, North orCarolina 28564-3274PO Box 20555Greenville, North Carolina 27858

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

All who get this are either blind or have someone blind in their family.
Jeanne Cory Doctorow: USA, Canada and the EU attempt to kill treaty
to protect blind people's access to written material

http://www.boingboing.net/2009/05/29/usa-canada-and-the-e.html

USA, Canada and the EU attempt to kill treaty to protect blind people's access to written material

Posted by Cory Doctorow, May 29, 2009 1:52 AM

Right now, in Geneva, at the UN's World Intellectual Property Organization, history is being made. For the first time in WIPO history, the body that creates the world's copyright treaties is attempting to write a copyright treaty dedicated to protecting the interests of copyright users, not just copyright owners.

At issue is a treaty to protect the rights of blind people and people with other disabilities that affect reading (people with dyslexia, people who are paralyzed or lack arms or hands for turning pages).
This should be a slam dunk: who wouldn't want a harmonized system of copyright exceptions that ensure that it's possible for disabled people to get access to the written word?

The USA, that's who. The Obama administration's negotiators have joined with a rogue's gallery of rich country trade representatives to oppose protection for blind people. Other nations and regions opposing the rights of blind people include Canada and the EU.

Update: Also opposing rights for disabled people: Australia, New Zealand, the Vatican and Norway.

Activists at WIPO are desperate to get the word out. They're tweeting madly from the negotiation (technically called the 18th session of the Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights) publishing editorials on the Huffington Post, etc.

Here's where you come in: this has to get wide exposure, to get cast as broadly as possible, so that it will find its way into the ears of the obscure power-brokers who control national trade-negotiators.

I don't often ask readers to do things like this, but please, forward this post to people you know in the US, Canada and the EU, and ask them to reblog, tweet, and spread the word, especially to government officials and activists who work on disabled rights. We know that WIPO negotiations can be overwhelmed by citizen activists -- that's how we killed the Broadcast Treaty negotiation a few years back -- and with your help, we can make history, and create a world where copyright law protects the public interest.

I am attending a meeting in Geneva of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). This evening the United States government, in combination with other high income countries in "Group B" is seeking to block an agreement to discuss a treaty for persons who are blind or have other reading disabilities.

The proposal for a treaty is supported by a large number of civil society NGOs, the World Blind Union, the National Federation of the Blind in the US, the International DAISY Consortium, Recording for the Blind & Dyslexic (RFB&D), Bookshare.Org, and groups representing persons with reading disabilities all around the world.

The main aim of the treaty is to allow the cross-border import and export of digital copies of books and other copyrighted works in formats that are accessible to persons who are blind, visually impaired, dyslexic or have other reading disabilities, using special devices that present text as refreshable braille, computer generated text to speech, or large type.
These works, which are expensive to make, are typically created under national exceptions to copyright law that are specifically written to benefit persons with disabilities...

The opposition from the United States and other high income countries is due to intense lobbying from a large group of publishers that oppose a "paradigm shift," where treaties would protect consumer interests, rather than expand rights for copyright owners.

The Obama Administration was lobbied heavily on this issue, including meetings with high level White House officials. Assurances coming into the negotiations this week that things were going in the right direction have turned out to be false, as the United States delegation has basically read from a script written by lobbyists for publishers, extolling the virtues of market based solutions, ignoring mountains of evidence of a "book famine" and the insane legal barriers to share works.