Imagine you couldn't do exactly what you're doing right now: read a piece of printed material. Imagine you couldn't hold a newspaper in your hands, or see it if you could -- imagine you couldn't scan the grocery store specials each week to plan your family's shopping. Imagine not being able to read the obituaries, or to find out when holiday trash collection is.
Literally thousands of people in Hampton Roads don't have to imagine those things: they're the reality of every day life. According to the Virginia Department for the Blind, there are more than 154,000 blind or severely visually impaired citizens in WHRO's service area. And that number doesn't include sighted individuals whose physical limitations prevent them from manipulating newspapers, magazines or books!
More than twenty years ago, WHRO looked for a way to respond to these statistics, and with a lot of research and hard work, they established the Hampton Roads Voice for the Print Handicapped, a radio reading service to provide what national radio and TV news coverage can't: the flavor of a community's life that's best represented in the local sections of a newspaper. The Voice began in a makeshift studio in a trailer under the leadership of the late Peter Pine, with eight volunteer readers. The service was then – as it is now – offered free of charge to qualifying individuals, transmitted via a radio that's been specially modified to receive the closed circuit signal. Today the Voice operates out of a fully equipped FM broadcast studio that's named for Mr. Pine, and boasts more than a thousand receivers in use throughout Hampton Roads. It has also joined the digital age and can be streamed via internet to computers in Hampton Roads and around the world. The number of volunteers has grown to right almost one hundred, who read local newspapers live on the air -- concentrating on regional stories, obituaries and commentaries – and grocery store ads. The service has been expanded to include locally both the Virginian Pilot and the Daily Press, as well as PortFolio Weekly and other periodicals. When live readers aren't on the air, the Voice supplements with syndicated programming from the Virginia Voice or the In Touch network to maintain the 24-hour, 365-day schedule.
For more information on volunteering or applying for a receiver, please contact Meg Brown at 757.889.9366, or email megan.brown@whro.org.
Click here to find out more about who we serve and get an application.
The Hampton Roads Voice is funded by the United Way of South Hampton Roads, the Commonwealth of Virginia, the Lions Clubs of District 24-D, the Virginia Association of the Blind . . . and by individual WHRO members.