Our team of volunteers produce a weekly Talking News edition (except at Christmas and at Easter). We work to a pre-agreed rota compiled and distributed by our volunteer Registrar.

There can be up to four Readers recording the weekly Talking News edition in our dedicated recording Studio at YCSS on Dean Road, Scarborough. This comprises an Editor (who chooses what is read) and up to three additional Readers. Usually, each Reader takes it in turn to read his/her piece and it is all recorded to computer by the Recorder.

We begin at 10.00 am on a Wednesday morning and the recording process takes about 1.5 – 2.0 hours to complete. After that, the duty Recorder will edit out any glitches and prepare the recording for splitting into tracks to be copied to the USBs. That can take up to another couple of hours, depending on how accurate the Readers have been.

The Recorder produces two master USBs at the end of the Wednesday recording process (these USBs are left for our Thursday team).

The duty Recorder also uploads the MP3s to the dedicated Talking News portal later on the Wednesday afternoon. This provides online access to the Talking News in a variety of ways.

The following day, on Thursday morning, our duty Copier duplicates the USBs en masse using two special machines which wipe clean and then copy several USBs at a time from the two master USB sticks.

The copied USBs are passed to the duty Despatcher who will sort our special USB delivery wallets ready for despatch. He/she inserts a copied USB into each wallet. We make a note of who is to be sent the wallets which are then taken to the post (freepost – articles for the blind) later on the same morning.

Sometimes, the two Thursday volunteers will work together on both processes to speed up the process.

There are volunteer shifts available to suit your own circumstances. Our volunteer Registrar who organises the rota (usually over a three month period) will contact you in advance to check on your availability. Usually we ask for a once a month commitment but some volunteers are happy to do more and to be on standby, too, in the case of any last-minute need. Some people may do two in a month if they are on holiday in a subsequent month. We are quite flexible in that way in all the roles that we have.

All volunteers receive full training in each aspect of their respective roles.

If you are still interested to volunteer for any role or roles please use our volunteer application form.

Alternatively, if you would like to discuss matters further, please contact our Secretary who will put you in touch with the relevant person.