Middleton Talking Newspaper will continue, committee confirms

A local Talking Newspaper for the blind will continue to be recorded and distributed into 2019, the committee has confirmed.

A statement released by Brian Brown (Chairman), Marjorie Maxwell (Secretary/Editor), Cathie Prescott (Treasurer) and Pauline Cook (Vice-Chairman) says the Middleton Talking Newspaper service will recommence recording in 2019 after Christmas and New Year.

• www.rochdaleonline.co.uk/news-features/2/news-headlines/124593/middleton-talking-newspaper-to-fold

The statement reads: “The article of 6 December concerning Middleton Talking Newspaper is, fortunately, not true.

“The Middleton Talking Newspaper is not finishing. We are continuing to record and send out our tapes, weekly.

“We are still very much open for business and are very sorry if any of our listeners have been upset by the article.

“Our last tape of 2018 will be sent out next Thursday (20 December). We will commence recording 2019 tapes on Thursday 3 January.

“If, and when, the time comes that we disband, the first people to know will be our listeners – by tape.”

In January 1970, one of the first Talking Newspapers was born. Tape cassettes dropped through the letterboxes of twenty blind people in Cardiganshire. The idea caught on and, slowly but surely, Talking Newspapers began to spring up in other parts of the country.

By 1974, there were enough to warrant the formation of a national membership body, the Talking Newspaper Association of the United Kingdom (TNAUK).

With the advancement of technology over the years, some Talking Newspapers have switched to providing a USB with recorded news stories, whilst specialist accessible internet browsers have been developed for blind and visually impaired users.