Newspapers and Vision Loss: Yes, It's Still Possible!

Summary

Hadley Presents: A Conversation with the Experts
Episode: Newspapers and Vision Loss: Yes, It's Still Possible!
Release Date: January 2, 2025
Host: Ricky Enger
Guest: Steve Kelly

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Introduction to NFB Newsline

In this insightful episode, host Ricky Enger welcomes Steve Kelly from the National Federation of the Blind (NFB) to discuss NFB Newsline, a pivotal service designed to provide individuals with vision loss access to newspapers and magazines through audio formats. The conversation kicks off with Ricky highlighting common challenges faced by those with vision impairment, such as missing out on daily news or favorite magazines.

Notable Quote:
Ricky Enger introduces Steve Kelly with enthusiasm, stating, “...each time you're here, I feel like we at least make a reference to NFB Newsline, and we've never had a chance to expand on it before until now.” ([00:26])

What is NFB Newsline?

Steve Kelly elaborates on NFB Newsline, emphasizing its role as an essential service for individuals experiencing vision loss. He explains that many users contact Hadley expressing their inability to read newspapers due to small print, akin to the declining print sizes in newspapers over the years.

Notable Quote:
Steve defines the service succinctly, “...the elevator pitch is you want to get back to reading your newspaper and magazines again. Well, NFB Newsline is the way to do it.” ([01:30])

Ricky further clarifies the acronym NFB, revealing it stands for the National Federation of the Blind, an American organization dedicated to advocacy and providing resources for the blind and visually impaired. Importantly, membership in NFB is not a prerequisite to access NFB Newsline.

Accessibility and Eligibility

A significant portion of the discussion revolves around who qualifies for NFB Newsline. Steve passionately addresses the misconception that only those who are completely blind can benefit from the service. He underscores that NFB Newsline is available to anyone experiencing difficulties with reading print, thereby broadening its accessibility.

Notable Quote:
Steve shares his personal connection to the issue, stating, “...anybody who's having difficulty reading print for whatever reason is eligible for NFB Newsline.” ([05:11])

How to Sign Up for NFB Newsline

Ricky and Steve outline the straightforward process to enroll in NFB Newsline. Prospective users can either contact their state’s National Library Service (NLS) branch or call the NFB directly at 866-504-7300. Ricky mentions that listeners can also reach out to Hadley for assistance in signing up.

Notable Quote:
Steve provides clear instructions, “...call [phone] or [e-mail].” ([03:49])

What Can You Access on NFB Newsline?

The episode delves into the extensive range of publications available through NFB Newsline. With over 500 publications, users have access to more than 300 newspapers and approximately 60 magazines. Additionally, the service offers resources like the AP wire service, TV listings, classifieds, and weather updates.

Notable Quote:
Steve breaks down the offerings, “...there's something like 60 or more magazines, like all kinds of magazines. And then you have AP wire service, you have TV listings...” ([07:11])

Ricky adds that depending on geographical location, users might also access local store circulars, enhancing the service's utility for tasks like grocery shopping.

Personal Experiences with NFB Newsline

Both Ricky and Steve share their personal journeys with NFB Newsline, highlighting its impact on their lives. Steve reminisces about his initial use of the service through a work phone, navigating the system via touchpad and smartphone, and later embracing more advanced features.

Notable Quote:
Steve reflects, “...I felt like, you know, the world was kind of collapsing on me just because I... I didn't have that access to the stuff that I really enjoyed.” ([16:05])

Ricky recounts her excitement at accessing Rolling Stone and reconnecting with her hometown newspaper, illustrating the profound personal benefits the service offers.

Notable Quote:
Ricky shares, “...being able to read Rolling Stone was amazing. And then I discovered that... I was always curious, hey, what's going on back in my little small town...” ([09:28])

Access Methods: From Traditional Phones to Modern Technology

A key focus is the versatility of accessing NFB Newsline. Steve details the various platforms available, ensuring that individuals with varying levels of technological comfort can utilize the service. Whether through traditional landlines, flip phones, mobile applications like Dolphin Easy Reader, or even smart assistants like Amazon Alexa, NFB Newsline accommodates diverse preferences.

Notable Quote:
Steve reassures listeners, “...if what you're accustomed to is just your flip phone or your landline, you can do it.” ([11:58])

Ricky further emphasizes the simplicity of the process, highlighting features like automatic recognition of the user's phone number after the initial login and the scanning feature in the mobile app that reads printed material aloud.

Overcoming Technological Barriers

The conversation acknowledges potential apprehensions about adopting new technology. Both hosts encourage listeners to embrace the available tools, assuring them that NFB Newsline is designed to be user-friendly. Ricky mentions that Hadley is available to guide users in finding the most suitable access method for their needs.

Notable Quote:
Ricky comforts listeners, “...don't panic. If what you're accustomed to is just your flip phone or your landline, you can do it.” ([12:57])

Steve adds, “...they've really broken it down so that pretty much whatever device you happen to have handy... there's something that's going to be convenient...” ([14:32])

Final Thoughts and Encouragement

As the episode concludes, Ricky and Steve passionately advocate for listeners to take advantage of NFB Newsline. They highlight the service’s ability to restore a sense of normalcy and independence by enabling access to beloved publications without technological intimidation.

Notable Quote:
Ricky encapsulates the sentiment, “...this is an amazing service and there's really nothing to lose by calling that 800 number or calling us here at Hadley...” ([15:15])

Steve echoes this encouragement, “...it's so empowering. So I can't say enough about trying something like this and doing it, even if... Even if it's a little different.” ([16:05])

Conclusion

This episode of Hadley Presents serves as an invaluable resource for individuals with vision loss, offering a comprehensive overview of NFB Newsline. Through engaging dialogue and personal anecdotes, Ricky and Steve illuminate the service’s benefits, accessibility, and the transformative impact it can have on daily life. Listeners are left empowered to reclaim their reading habits and stay informed with the support of NFB Newsline.

Final Quote:
Steve passionately concludes, “...give it a whirl. As you said, it's free, right? So what have you got to lose?” ([16:05])

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For more information or to subscribe to future episodes, visit Hadley Presents.

Transcript

[A]

With vision loss, you might find that you're missing essential parts of your routine, like catching up on the news or reading your favorite magazines. In this episode, Hadley's Steve Kelly joins us to discuss NFB Newsline, a service for accessing publications and news via audio. I'm Ricky Enger, and this is Hadley Presents. Welcome to the show, Steve.

[B]

Hey, Ricky. Thanks for having me.

[A]

It is really good to have you here, as always. And the funny part about all this is each time you're here, I feel like we at least make a reference to NFB Newsline, and we've never had a chance to expand on it before until now.

[B]

There could be a reason for that. As we've chatted about before, it's like one of those essential services that I think we would recommend to everybody, but then when they ask what is it? And what it's about, we kind of pause. Right. Because it just goes on and on. There are just so many different ways to approach it.

[A]

Yeah. It's hard to kind of sum it up simply, but I think that's really where we should start. So if you're having to give someone a quick elevator pitch about not so much how to access Newsline, because we'll get into that, but really, what is it? What does it do?

[B]

When I was seeing people face to face, you know, what I heard most of the time, and we still hear it, you know, we pick up the phone here at Hadley is, I miss reading the newspaper. And a lot of folks with an acquired vision loss might say, you know, I can still read the headlines or something like that, but they're just not able to read the smaller print. And honestly, I think the print in newspapers has gotten smaller over the years. And so next to driving, that seems to be the big one. So the elevator pitch is you want to get back to reading your newspaper and magazines again. Well, NFB Newsline is the way to do it.

[A]

That's perfect, actually. I mean, if you're going to catch someone's interest, it's like, hey, here's this problem that you have, and now here's a way to solve it. I know when people hear the name NFB Newsline, it's actually a little bit confusing because you have this random string of letters and then Newsline, what in the world is that? So I think it's worth mentioning how the name came about. The NFB portion of this stands for National Federation of the Blind, and that is an American organization. So just people who are losing their vision or who are totally blind are members of this organization. They do a lot of great advocacy. They have conventions each year. They can get you in touch with local and national resources. But it is worth noting you don't have to be a member of NFB in order to be a part of NFB Newsline. The Newsline portion of things seems a little bit self explanatory because you've got the news part. The line part actually comes from how this started initially, which was entirely phone based. So we'll talk about different ways to access it here in just a bit. But yeah, if someone is having a hard time reading the newspaper or they're missing that favorite magazine, how do you get signed up for NFB Newsline?

[B]

I think it's pretty simple. The two ways that I would think of is. And again, this is going to bring up another one of these acronyms, but the National Library Service in each state is a place where a person can call if they've already signed up for talking books. And if they haven't, then there's an 800 number at the National Federation of the Blind that you can call and they'll get you set up with an application.

[A]

It's 866-504-7300. And we'll have that in our show notes. Or you can just call us here at Hadley and we'll get that to you as well. But yeah, you can give them a call or get in touch with your NLS branch. And if you're wondering what NLS is, we have a podcast for that too, which we'll have in the show notes. Definitely an incredible service that you want to be a part of if you're missing reading things. And speaking of reading things, one question always comes up, which is, so NFB stands for National Federation of the Blind. Does that mean I have to be totally blind to access this service? Like you said earlier, some people, yeah, I can still read the headlines. So maybe this isn't for me.

[B]

I think that's one of the most interesting things and it's kind of one of my little soapboxes, probably because I've experienced it myself. So I think a lot of times when people are starting to have difficulty with their vision, it usually starts where, you know, it's just small stuff like you can't read the newsprint anymore or, you know, the mail or something like that. And the last thing people want to do is identify as somebody who's blind because they're not. They have low vision or they have difficulty seeing or, you know, however they choose to describe it. To themselves. And I think that sometimes if you recommend, oh gee, you know, Newsline from the National Federation of the Blind, all of a sudden that in itself is just a barrier because that, you know, that person often is not identifying themselves as blind. And so I think that it's just important to remind folks, both with talking books and with the Newsline that any kind of print disability, and even that's a tough word for people to get around sometimes too. But anybody who's having difficulty reading print for whatever reason is eligible for NFB Newsline.

[A]

Yeah, because there's some really cool stuff that you can access on Newsline. There's maybe a lot that you're missing. And you just think there was just a member of Hadley telling her story and one of the things that she said was, you know, I'm retired and I was looking forward to reading and now I can't. And I thought I had to give that up. And no, indeed you do not.

[B]

Trivia question. Do you know from your reading how many publications are available on NFB Newsline?

[A]

I want to say it's over 500 and it may be well over 500, but I know that it is at least that. So that actually brings up an interesting question. We talk about publications and that could be anything. So what exactly can you get on NFB Newsline?

[B]

Well, I think the breakdown is something like this. I think that there's 300 plus newspapers, then I think there's something like 60 or more magazines, like all kinds of magazines. And then you have AP wire service, you have TV listings, you have like a classifieds and the weather. So you've got like a wide variety of different publications and information resources, all just from Newsline. Once you get signed up.

[A]

And depending on where you are, you can also get access to, you know, those little circulars that the grocery stores do. So if you're still doing shopping not through Instacart, you're actually going to the store and picking out your stuff. It's could be really helpful to know what's available in the ad that week. For my area it just shows target, but I think that it is location dependent. So you may end up having a lot more in your area depending on what stores you have and so on.

[B]

Oh yeah, I think a lot of it just depends on what the publications send over to Newsline on a daily basis. And I think it's also worth pointing out too, there are only three states that do not participate in Newsline. North Dakota, Alaska and Wyoming. But every other state is a participant in Newsline. And it's free.

[A]

Hey, free. We love free. Free is good.

[B]

No? Isn't that awesome?

[A]

So do you happen to remember what your first experience with Newsline was? What did you end up reading?

[B]

I think I was reading one of the local newspapers here in Maine and I was accessing it using my work phone, which, which had, you know, a touchpad on it and also a smartphone. I, you know, and I've used a flip phone as well. But that, that was my first introduction. I'm not even sure that they had the mobile app or a lot of the other features available at that time. It was just, you know, learning the different commands based on the numbers that you pressed.

[A]

Right. I think for me, the first thing I accessed wasn't a newspaper. I did get into that later, but I was ecstatic to find that I could get Rolling Stone on Newsline. I love music and I grew up with my sighted friends reading from the music magazines, which was a great bonding thing in some ways. But in other ways it was really annoying because there might be bands that I was into that they weren't, and so convincing them. Yeah, you got to read me this story of the band you hate. Not so much. So being able to read Rolling Stone was amazing. And then I discovered that living sort of across the country from my family, I was always curious, hey, what's going on back in my little small town that I grew up in? And turns out that not only can I read my local newspaper, but I can check in on that newspaper in my hometown as well. And I was just so surprised. I mean, it's a town of 20 something thousand people and. And yet the newspaper is there for me to browse through.

[B]

You know, I wonder to what degree that's unusual because, you know, I do notice that when I look on some of the state publications, that some states have a bunch of publications and then others, for example, mine in Maine, we just have two publications and each state has got a wide variety of smaller local papers. And sometimes those are the ones where you really get the meat of, you know, what's going on in your community.

[A]

Yeah, exactly. I think something that many people listening tend to think about when we mention some new service that is going to give them something back. You know, something that could be life changing. There's always that sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach. You know, maybe this works for some people, but I'm just not very tech savvy. I don't care to be. I really just want my info back. So is this even Appropriate for me. Are there ways that I can access it that don't involve learning a brand new piece of technology or what have you?

[B]

That is such a great question. So the short answer is if you're comfortable with a landline or a flip phone, then that's the way to access NFB Newsline. You get a username and a passcode and you just put that in the first time you call and then after that, each time you call the phone number and there are local numbers for each state and you can listen to the newspaper right on the phone, you know, pressing the buttons. It's that simple. And then for those, those folks who are comfortable with their mobile phones, there's an app on the iPhone. I use an Android phone, so I use the Dolphin Easy Reader app, which is relatively accessible. And you can also get it on the computer or the Victor Reader Stream and on and on and on. Maybe that's where people get bogged down or we get bogged down too. It's like, wow, there's so many different ways to do it. But the, you know, don't panic. If what you're accustomed to is just your flip phone or your landline, you can do it.

[A]

Yeah, I love that they've made an effort to make it simple to get in. So like you said, you get that six digit code and then a four digit PIN or passcode or whatever you want to call it. And once you have logged in the first time from your phone, it knows, okay, you're calling from this number. You don't have to enter this every time. Even I hesitate to say this because I don't want to trigger people's assistance. But the Amazon Echo, the A L E X A, you can get it from the that as well. So you just have to say the name of the assistant and then open NFB Newsline and then it will talk you through what you need to do to get logged into that. One of the really cool things about if you're doing this from the phone app is that not only do you have access to, to the material on NFB Newsline, but there is a scanning feature that will allow you to basically take pictures of print and get that read aloud to you as well. So that's pretty cool. If you're feeling like your head is spinning a bit, we are happy here at Hadley just to ask you some questions and kind of drill down on what might be the best way to access it for you.

[B]

Oh yeah, absolutely. And you know, and again, this is kind of like diving a little Bit into the deep end. But you can even put the sound files on the cartridges that go in the talking book player. So, you know, maybe you've got somebody at home or you know, you've got that 12 year old that knows how to do all this stuff, right? They can just put all that information on your talking book player. You pop the cartridge in, you hit the play button and you can listen to your newspaper. So, I mean, they've really broken it down so that pretty much whatever device you happen to have handy and at whatever level of technology you happen to be, there's something that's going to be convenient, portable, you know, they've just made it super easy, I think.

[A]

Yeah, I think so too. And I think that's what I would leave people with. And I'll ask you about final thoughts too. But I would just say to people whether you've never had that opportunity to read your local news or maybe national or international news in a way that is simple, you know, not full of ads, or you're having to wait for someone to read that to you. Or maybe you are accustomed to doing that. You're used to having your coffee and checking out your newspaper and now you're finding that you can't do that. This is just an amazing service and there's really nothing to lose by calling that 800 number or calling us here at Hadley or checking the show notes to figure out how to get signed up for that. Anything you would add to that, Steve?

[B]

Yeah, for sure. You know, as somebody who's kind of been in that boat myself, I was actually a circulation director at a newspaper for about 10 years. And so, you know, newspapers were a big deal for me. And when I started having difficulty reading the newspaper, I felt like, you know, the world was kind of collapsing on me just because I. I didn't have that access to the stuff that I really enjoyed. And as I was telling you a couple of weeks ago when we were talking about this, I just realized anyhow, with the Dolphin Easy Reader, when things are loaded in there, I can skim through the newspaper the way I used to do it before, where you just kind of go and you read the headline and it's like, nah, I don't want to read that. And then you flick through and you finally find the one that you want and you hit the play button and it reads it and it's just so empowering and so amazing. And we talk to people who, you know, sometimes have been kind of beaten down by just where they happen to be and you know, this is one of those things where you kind of get back into the game and get back into the things that you're doing it in a different way. But I just think it's so empowering. So I can't say enough about trying something like this and doing it, even if. Even if it's a little different. You know, just give it a whirl. As you said, it's free, right? So what have you got to lose?

[A]

Yes, exactly. Wow. And what a perfect way to sum that up. It just feels empowering to get back to. Maybe it's a little different way of reading than you're accustomed to, but that power to make the choice about this is a thing I want to learn more about or this is the magazine I miss reading. This is a way for you to do that. So, yeah, thanks so much, Steve, for sharing not only some of the mechanics of how to do this, but just some of your own experience. For being on the other side and being a little reluctant and then what this has given back to you in a way.

[B]

Oh, it's great to be here. Thanks so much, Ricky. I appreciate it.

[A]

Thanks for listening. Got something to say? Share your thoughts about this episode of Hadley Presents or make suggestions for future episodes. We'd love to hear from you. Send us an [e-mail] that's P O-A S tadleyhelps.org or leave us a message at 847-784-2870. Thanks for listening.