Last week I spoke to Jim Welch, founder of the charity Blind Life in Durham. He told me how communication to visually impaired and blind people had changed since the charity started out with a newsletter in 2004.
Jim went blind in 2002 but was already using technology in his home to record and edit his music onto cassette for his own enjoyment. He is a keen guitarist and keyboard player with a penchant for the Shadows. Back then the equipment he used was analog and depended on a time-consuming process to achieve a good recording standard.
All this was good experience for his idea of using a cassette format as an alternative to large print for a monthly newsletter for Blind Life in Durham members. However, CDs were already becoming more popular and Jim ran a pilot scheme giving members a choice between getting a newsletter via large print or cassette or CD. At first members weren't too sure of the new technology but the pilot proved CDs would be popular.
This showed that offering a choice to people with visual impairments persuaded them that they could try new technologies they had thought they would never be able to use. The charity has recently added a Kindle and an iPad to its loan equipment for members so that they can increase their confidence in using new technology.
People who have visual impairments or who are blind are now using smartphones such as the iPhone to keep in touch and MP3 players to listen to downloaded books and music. Blind Life in Durham successfully piloted Dropbox and Email as ways of delivering their Newsletter to great success, so it's likely those formats will be offered to new members as additional choices. Jim told me that the most recent pilot of offering the Newsletter as text or audio MP3 files on a memory stick looked promising.