Audio newspaper

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Audio newspapers contain spoken texts from printed media that can be subscribed to on sound carriers . The term (also audio magazine) has established itself among the blind and visually impaired to distinguish it from audio books. The compact cassette, which had dominated for decades, is being replaced more and more by CDs with MP3 files or in daisy format .

history

With the compact cassette it became possible in the 1970s to reproduce sound carriers quickly and easily. Individual audio libraries for the blind and self-help associations for the blind began to record articles from local newspapers, for example, to reproduce the recordings and to send them to their members. In 1976, the Aktion Tonband-Zeitung for the blind was founded as a supraregional service facility (today: atz audio media for the visually impaired and the blind); In Holzminden (Lower Saxony) she set up a service center for the reproduction and distribution of audio newspapers for many regions in Germany. This made local audio newspapers possible without major investments on site.

At the same time as the local newspapers, various editors founded audio magazines on numerous topics (each with their own editorial team that compiles texts from various sources) as well as audio editions of individual print media, partly in part (e.g. Focus, GEO), but also in full (Spiegel). The self-help associations for the blind and visually impaired often publish their club magazines as audio newspapers.

Since 2010, audio newspapers have been appearing almost exclusively digitally in Daisy / MP3 format, mostly on CD or for download. The sound recordings are given a structure that allows users to navigate comfortably.

offer

The topics of the audio newspapers are just as broad as the print offer; The number and size of the titles are, however, considerably lower. There are audio newspapers from several providers on particularly high-profile topics, but many topics are not taken into account. Publishers of print editions rarely support the production of a "barrier-free" version for the blind.

Many audio newspapers only bring excerpts from the corresponding printed media, because it takes a lot of effort to speak. Attempts with synthetic speech find very limited approval from the (mostly older) listeners. Audio newspapers provide blind people with limited access to print media and are therefore an important source of information alongside the Internet.

financing

While the audiobooks for the blind receive public subsidies for library operations, audiobooks have to be financed from user contributions. The relatively small user group excludes financial gain; therefore the circle of providers is limited to a few non-profit institutions and a few private initiatives. Most audio newspapers could not survive without volunteer work; In order to preserve the charitable status (and postage-free shipping as a blind item ), the circle of recipients remains limited to the blind and visually impaired.