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Calderdale Talking Newspaper

Dedicated volunteers from Halifax provide a talking newspaper service for locals on cassettes, strangely not motivated by money.

Documentary 1981 6 mins Not rated

CC AD

From the collection of:

Logo for Yorkshire Film Archive

Overview

Local Halifax Cine Club members are on hand to document the new Calderdale Talking Newspaper not long after its first cassette was recorded on 24th October, 1979. Volunteers have got together to bring highlights of all the local news to those in the area with a visual impairment, painstakingly selecting choice articles, recording them fortnightly onto 90 minute cassettes, and posting them in special re-usable envelopes.

This is one of many documentaries made by Halifax Cine Club highlighting aspects of their local area and community. The first talking newspaper in Britain was established in Cardiganshire in January 1970, after librarian Ronald Sturt paid a study visit to Västerås in Sweden in 1968, and saw one in operation. The idea caught on across the country, and by 1974 there were enough to warrant the formation of the Talking Newspaper Association of the United Kingdom (TNAUK). Calderdale Talking Newspaper Association is still in operation but has now moved on from cassettes and provides free audio files on a USB memory stick which can be played on an MP3 player.

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