Sandwell Visually Impaired

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Sandwell Talking News

Sandwell Talking News (STN) is a weekly audio newspaper for blind and visually impaired people in and around Sandwell. It contains stories from the Sandwell Express and Star (with their kind permission) along with information about equipment, technology, social and cultural activities.  It’s produced and recorded by volunteers. We add the new edition to the web page on Saturdays, sometimes a bit earlier.

This week’s STN and recent editions

How to listen

You can listen online, with Alexa, on the phone or we can send you a USB (pen drive) or CDs in the post every week. Our postal service is for visually impaired people who live in and around Sandwell. Want to sign up for this free service? Contact us via Sandwell Visually Impaired.

Listen on Alexa

We are available on Amazon Echo devices. Enable the Talking Newspapers skill via your connected mobile device or computer first. Once enabled, just ask Alexa to ‘Open Talking Newspapers’ and follow the instructions. If you have previously used My Talking Newspaper skill, delete this skill as it may conflict with the new Talking Newspapers skill.

Podcasts

We are now available as a podcast on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. You can subscribe to our podcast using the RSS feed. Details available on each edition.

Listen on your phone

You can listen to  Sandwell Talking News on your phone, thanks to our work with the Talking News Federation.  Call on 0121 699 6696. Full instructions are available when you dial in. You can also leave feedback for us via phone message on this service. Give it a try! Local call charges apply.

Volunteers

Thank you to all our volunteers past and present – they are superstars. We are entirely volunteer run and would not exist without their regular support. We were overwhelmed with the response to our appeal for volunteer readers in the 2020 Covid crisis. We are pleased to say that many of those who volunteered at that time continue to do so today, six years later. Along with our solid band of longer-term volunteers. And of course, the new ones…including occasional input from volunteers’ children.

Would you like to join us? We particularly welcome blind and partially sighted volunteers. There is much more that goes on behind the scenes than reading the news. We could really do with people who can help with audio editing and compiling, and admin tasks. Please get in touch.

Contact us

Email: sandwelltn@gmail.com

Phone: c/o Sandwell Visually Impaired (SVI) on 0121 525 4810 or leave a message on our answering service on 0121 699 6696. We will get back to you as soon as we can.

Thanks to…

We provide a postal service to listeners in the borough thanks to the Tipton Tree of Light fund (from Tipton Civic Society) and generous donations from our friends and listeners.  Other funding came from a number of Community First Panels,  the West Bromwich Community Chest Fund and Healthy Sandwell Micro Grants.

Thanks to the Editor of Express & Star papers and Sandwell Council for permission to use news items.  A big thank you to Infosound for allowing talking newspapers to use their articles free of charge.

Not least, thanks to our loyal team of readers who give their time freely every week, often after a hard day’s work, to spend time reading the paper for us.

We are members of the Talking News Federation.

More about us

STN was first produced in 1979 by a small team of volunteers who worked with Wednesbury College. At that time it was distributed to over 150 visually impaired people in Sandwell. Over the years it has been recorded in a variety of places. We do not have a recording studio, so production and distribution tasks, along with recording, are all done in volunteers’ own homes. We had to make this change quickly during the pandemic and have continued to operate mainly remotely ever since.

Sandwell TN is managed via a volunteer committee in association with Sandwell Visually Impaired. We  would like to thank Sandwell Visually Impaired for hosting our information on their website and for all the other support that they give us.

Mission statement

Our mission is to provide regular audio news and relevant information to blind and visually impaired people in and around Sandwell to help combat isolation and promote a feeling of community. It is central to our ethos that blind and visually impaired people play leading roles in Sandwell Talking News, both operationally and strategically.

Your data and privacy

Important information regarding the Data Protection Act and in particular to the General Data Protection Regulations as to how we use your contact details.

How your information is used and the steps we take to ensure it is secure.

When you ask to receive recordings produced by the Sandwell Talking News, you provide your name and address so that we can send you our memory sticks or CDs. This information is stored in a secure database and address labels are also stored in a secure location. Having left our premises, the address labels and postal wallets are then under the care and protection of Royal Mail.

Your contact details are only used for sending you our memory sticks or CDs and will never be forwarded to a third party.

If you ask us to stop sending the Sandwell Talking News to you, your contact details will be deleted from our database and your address labels will be permanently destroyed.

We promise and assure you that we take data protection seriously and make every effort to meet the requirements of the Data Protection Act.

If your circumstances do change, you move home, change your phone number or you no longer wish to receive the Sandwell Talking News in the post, please call the SVI office on 0121 525 4810 or email sandwelltn@gmail.com so that we can make the necessary changes.

Christmas Special editions

Get into the festive spirit with our festive editions for the last five years!

You can listen below:

Christmas Special 2024

Christmas Special 2023

Christmas Special 2022

Christmas Special 2021

Christmas Special 2020

Useful links