At the 2015 AGM the members of Reading's Talking Newspaper for the Blind
ask us to change the name to bring it up to date with present preferred days wording, I.E. remove the for the Blind
from our title.
Reading's Talking Newsto bring it inline with todays situation. This was accepted by the charities commission going through in August 2016.
On Friday 22nd November Reading Talking News had a stall, manned by a team of their volunteers, Jenny Sadler, Pat Williams, Murray Allan and Pam Downing, in a Christmas Craft Fayre run by Reading Association for the Blind at Walford Hall. The Fayre was opened by the Lady Mayor, Marian Livingston, who then visited all the stalls. She was very impressed by our home-made produce and bought some samples of our wares.
On the 19th November 2013, Peter Wickham, interviewer and recorder with Bob Bristow, Chairman of Reading talking news visited the Mayor of Reading, Marian Livingston to record a Christmas message for the sight impaired in Reading. The meeting took place in the mayor’s parlour where a welcoming cup of coffee was provided before the recording was started.
The recording started of with some background information where the mayor grew up and when she came to Reading followed up by her career in education plus other jobs with British Rail before retiring and joining the Labour party. When asked about her experience with vision-impaired persons the mayor said the only experience was a day out in Green Park where she was blind folded taken on a walk being lead around the park and how it was really scary walking over ruff ground not being how to see where her feet were going. The mayor also went through the sensory tunnel, Bob ask her to explain what this was and how she found it. The reply was the tunnel is set up to give the effect of being blind, and this felt rather strange walking through it hearing sound and feeling surfaces in a different manner some times being very scary. We then went on to record a brief Christmas message to end with, this went out just before Christmas.
The Mayor's Christmas message 2013Plans went well for the transfer to digital and the first USB drives-memory sticks went out on the 27th April 2011. We first loaned out the Artdio orb USB player-speakers, which went out of production late 2011 so we now loan the sovereign or sonic players to our listeners, these good sounding speakers apart from allowing track jumps forward or back like on a CD player also lets you jump back or forward in small steps by holding the forward or backward buttons down making it easy to check phone numbers or addresses. For those who have the Artdio player, see instructions by following the link on the home page,, this speaker also has a clear sound and has an easy way to navigate through the weeks articles.
Peter White the BBC’s disable correspondent took up this post in 2006. TNF, Talking Newspaper Federation is the new umbrella group for local talking newspapers.
Talking News FederationITN Newscaster, Sir Trevor McDonald O.B.E. is to become the Honorary President of the Talking Newspaper Association of the United Kingdom (TNAUK). This will no doubt raise the profile of Talking Newspapers to the benefit of all the groups and their listeners.
At the end of October 2004 Reading Libraries launch there revamped website:
Reading librariesReading's TN AGm 2010 was held at the Earley Day Centre, Kenton road, Earley, Reading on Tuesday June 15th at 7:30pm. There was a representative from Rotary who gave a donation of £1000 to help with purchasing new digital equipment.