Sandwell Visually Impaired

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Sandwell Talking News

This week’s STN and recent editions

Sandwell Talking News (STN) is a weekly audio newspaper aimed at people in Sandwell with visual impairments. It contains articles from the Sandwell Express and Star (with their kind permission) along with information about equipment, technology, social and cultural activities. It’s recorded and produced in Sandwell by volunteers. We add the new edition to the web page on Saturdays.

How to listen

You can listen online, with Alexa, with the British Wireless for the Blind app, 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 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 (BWBF) 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.

Download the app

Sandwell Talking News is available on British Wireless for the Blind’s new, free app for Android or Apple devices. Find out more and download the app here. The app is for anyone with sight loss. It gives you access to other Talking Newspapers too.

Volunteers

A huge thank you to Sandwell Council for promoting our appeal for readers for the Talking News. We were overwhelmed with the response. To all of those who volunteered to help us, THANK YOU. It’s  heart-warming to know how many people want to help us make sure that Sandwell Talking News continued through the COVID-19 crisis and beyond. All our volunteers are superstars.

Would you like to join us? Please get in touch.

Contact us

Email: sandwelltn@gmail.com

Phone: c/o Sandwell Visually Impaired (SVI) on 0121 525 4810.

Thanks to…

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

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 various locations, including people’s own homes.

Sandwell TN is now managed via a volunteer committee in association with Sandwell Visually Impaired.

Your data and privacy

Important information regarding the recent change to 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 wish to unsubscribe to the Sandwell Talking News, please call the office on 0121 525 4810 or email sandwellTN@gmail.com so that we can make the necessary changes.

Sandwell Talking News AGMs

We hold annual general meetings every year. Here is some information about the most recent ones.

2023 – On  Monday 24 April, our AGM was the first in-person one since the pandemic. Our guest speaker was Brendan Hawthorn, the Wednesbury Poet Laureate who we had featured in past editions of the Sandwell Talking News.

2022 –  On Monday 4 April  2022 we held another virtual AGM, with speakers Tim Pinnock, the acting Vice Chair of Sound On (The Ipswich and District Talking Newspaper) and Adrian Earle, writer and poet who has worked on productions with our partners, Sandwell Visually Impaired.

2021 – Our AGM was on 23 March, online on the Zoom platform. You can get highlights from the AGM and watch and listen to the speaker’s talk on YouTube via our news page. Or you can listen below:

Useful links