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Computer service offers newspapers by phone to the blind
April 26, 1996
Web posted at: 3:30 p.m. EDTBALTIMORE, Maryland (CNN) -- Blind people in five U.S. cities are among the first to enjoy a new service allowing them to make use of three major national newspapers -- thanks to a clever computer system that brings them the news over a touch-tone phone. (142K AIFF sound or 142K WAV sound)
Betsy Zaborowski is a Baltimore psychologist who has been legally blind since birth. She has about 5 percent normal vision and has never been able to read a newspaper.
But the National Federation of the Blind has spent half a million dollars to create a computerized system that allows Zaborowski and other blind people to "read" three major daily newspapers each day.
"I use it when I'm getting dressed in the morning," says Zaborowski. "I have a speaker-phone in the bedroom, and I listen as I'm getting ready."
Marc Maurer, president of the National Federation of the Blind, demonstrated how the system works, transforming the three major papers into computer voices.
Like a voice-mail delivery system, digital versions of the papers are sent daily to computers in Baltimore by 6:15 a.m. The information is relayed to regional centers, where it is converted to computer voices.
Users may select one of nine computer voices, Maurer says, "because it sounds better to you, or you have hearing difficulty of a particular voice."
The system seems more practical than a Braille newspaper, since only 12 percent of blind people read Braille.
"I'd rather have this new system," Maurer says, noting that the size of a Sunday newspaper -- done in Braille -- would be inconvenient at the least.
The computerized newspaper for the blind plans to go nationwide in the near future.
From Correspondent Dick Wilson
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