The Internet has a wealth of information ready and waiting for consumption. News articles populate Twitter. Interesting links are posted on Facebook, and heartwarming pictures shared via Flickr.
Along with all the vast quantity of mainstream resources there also lies specialized sources to obtain news and vignettes to people with disabilities, including people whom are blind or visually impaired.
One of these resources of content—even today, in an age where technology is ubiquitous—is radio-reading services.
Radio-reading services read select headlines from either local or national papers or news outlets on regular radio stations as well as broadcast on internet servers. People who are blind or visually impaired can usually stream more stations than tuning in to an FM channel.
One of these radio-reading services is a station produced by the Lighthouse for the blind and the visually impaired in Chicago called CRIS: Chicagoland Radio Information Service.
CRIS provides daily readings of newspapers and periodicals including news stories, sales circulars, and classified listings for listeners who have a wide range of disabilities. Through the use of volunteers, CRIS broadcasts readings of the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun-Times, Chicago Defender, and Daily Herald, and many more local newspapers and magazines.
There's a special 30-minute dedication to a demographic that no other radio-reading service focuses on, however, that makes CRIS unique. Currently, Every Friday at 8 p.m., LGBT news and issues are given center stage as two dedicated volunteers, Brian Treglown and Roger May, read politics, world news, city and national news, celebrity news, crime stories, sports, entertainment, and occasionally opinion articles, allowing LGBT news and issues to be heard by everyone.
The two volunteers record, verbatim, national and local news pertaining to the LGBT community. The volunteers pick stories a week ahead of time, as well as the order of the stories scheduled, to read from outlets such as Windy City Times, Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun Times, and numerous internet sources, including Huffington Post, Advocate, Out Sports, GRAB magazine, and others. They include stories from LGBT newspapers from the broader general media as well.
As the news industry goes online, they have increased their selection of stories to include stories from the internet. As the broader public media expands coverage of LGBT issues they are included in many other CRIS broadcasts, such as reading of the Chicago Tribune or Time Magazine.
For this segment, only articles pertaining to LGBT are broadcasted on the air. The decision to add this unique portion of the news was a desire to make the news broadcasts relevant to all listeners, including their LGBT listeners and allies of the LGBT community.
At the time of this writing, CRIS is the only radio-reading service that focuses a dedicated amount of time to news and issues pertaining to the LGBT community. CRIS is the only outlet, at this time, for people who wish to stay up to date with the LGBT community in an easily accessible audio format.
By using a special SCA receiver and broadcasting on WBEZ-FM's subcarrier frequency, listeners have access to the same LGBT news available to the sighted able bodied. More than 40,000 listeners tune in from receivers placed in private residences, schools, libraries, hospitals, nursing homes, retirement centers, hospices, low vision clinics, and community centers.
CRIS also broadcasts on CAN-TV, Channels 19 and 21, to a potential one million cable subscribers in the Chicago area and to the whole world via live audio streaming online. Listeners can access the day's programming via the CRIS Radio/Chicago Lighthouse Telephone Reader. The special interest programs, including the LGBT segments, are available for downloads and are also available as podcasts alongside the live listening options.
More information at the link: chicagolighthouse.org/programs-and-services/independent-living-services/chicagoland-radio-information-service-cris .
