50 Years of the South Wales Talking Newspapers and Magazines for the Blind

Our speaker, Tony Charles, currently a freelance photographer, based in Cardiff, provided us with a detailed and interesting history of the Talking Newspaper (TN) for the Blind. 

This venture started in Aberystwyth after Ronald Sturt, a lecturer at the College of Librarianship, had visited Sweden in 1968 and on seeing the work that was ingoing for the visually impaired, he discussed this with some local contacts and after some fund raising in 1969 the Papur Sain Ceredigion Talking Newspaper was launched on 1st January 1970 with 18 listeners receiving their large cassette tapes through the post.

In 1971 Cardiff followed on, and initially, their Paper was copied in Aberystwyth with a monthly round trip undertaken to get the copies made.   With the change in technology in the intervening years, copies have been produced on cassette tapes, CDs and currently on memory sticks.

In Wales there are about 17,000 that are visually impaired and locally, The Ogwr used to produce a TN for Bridgend.

Tony has been involved from the onset in Cardiff and he is the Chairman and Co-Founder of the South Wales Talking Magazine Association (SWTMA) and they will be celebrating their 50th Anniversary next year.