Telephone Reader Service Brings ‘The Bee’ To The Disabled

By Jan Howard

Are you “print-handicapped?” Would you like to hear what’s going on in town? The Newtown Bee is now available to blind and physically or learning disabled residents by way of the telephone.

Fifteen members of the Newtown Woman’s Club, as well as five men from various community organizations, are reading The Newtown Bee for CRIS (Connecticut Radio Information System), a private, non-profit organization. CRIS offers free 24-hour broadcasts of readings from newspapers and magazines for people who cannot read printed material because of visual, physical, or learning disabilities.

The Woman’s Club members are reading from home for CRIS’ new Telephone Reader program, which works like most voicemail systems where the CRIS broadcast shows are accessed through a touch tone telephone. The members use the index of the paper to cover all subjects from The Bee, including the sports section.

“It’s a brand new program,” said Jean Fadus, a member of the Newtown Woman’s Club and its home life chairman. “We began a two-year commitment in January, which will continue until December 2002.

“We want people who need the service to know about it,” Ms Fadus said.

Woman’s Club members spend from 35 to 40 minutes once a week on the project, following publication of The Bee, she said. “The six men are reading the sports section.”

There is no charge to people using the service, Ms Fadus noted. “They only need a telephone.”

The General Federation of Women’s Clubs of Connecticut announced recently that CRIS would be the beneficiary of its two-year statewide project. In addition to local fundraising and civic activities, the group adopts a statewide charity project every two years and commits funds and volunteer hours to that cause.

For information about the Telephone Reader program, call CRIS at 860-527-8000, or toll free, 800-708-0004, or Jean Fadus at 426-0756.

For a demonstration of how the Telephone Reader program sounds, call 800-950-1927, then enter identification number 5555.

According to CRIS literature, its volunteers are required to receive the newspaper and be willing to make a commitment one morning per week for a half an hour. Volunteers receive training on scripting, recording, and using a telephone headset, which helps to input the information.

CRIS was incorporated in August 1978 as the Connecticut Radio Information Service. Its name was changed to Connecticut Radio Information System in June 1990. Its first broadcast was November 26, 1979. That first two-hour broadcast had 50 listeners.

It became a 24-hour-a-day service on February 18, 1985. As of September 1999, it has 4,000 plus listeners.

It has over 400 volunteers, who contributed approximately 17,000 hours, worth an estimated $178,500 in personnel costs in 1999. It receives financial support from listeners, individuals, organizations, foundations, corporations, and the State of Connecticut.

CRIS is based at 589 Jordan Lane in Wethersfield. Satellite studios are located in Trumbull High School; Danbury Lions Club, 198 Main Street, Danbury; Three Rivers Community Technical College in Norwich; and the University of New Haven, 300 Orange Avenue, West Haven.

CRIS programs can also be heard statewide through a special pre-tuned CRIS radio, obtained from the CRIS office; a cable television connection to an FM radio; and as a secondary audio program channel of CPTV.