Press Releases | Sounding the News

SOUNDING THE NEWS: NEW WEB-BASED RADIO SERVICE LOOKING TO TRAIN VOLUNTEERS

Kaukab Jhumra Smith
Eugene Weekly
September 11, 2003

Can you read this page? Then you're luckier than some. What will you do next -- rifle through the Calendar section of Eugene Weekly? Pick up today's Emerald to check sports scores? Skim the editorials in the Register-Guard?

While you're catching up with local events, maybe you could also sign up to volunteer at Eugene Sounds (ES), the new web-based radio service by the Lane Independent Living Alliance (LILA). As a volunteer, you could read articles like this one aloud on the radio for blind, disabled or senior citizens -- people who can't glance at local printed news as easily as you can.

Passersby may have seen the hand-written sign asking for radio volunteers in the window of LILA's office at 10th and Olive. The green Magic Marker of the sign appears a little faded by the sun, but ES is only just getting ready to burst forth in living color -- uh, air -- at the end of September.

"We want to provide a source of community information to people who are limited in their ability to read print," says Carole Patterson, LILA organizer and board member for the last two years. EW caught up with her and Eugene Organ, the LILA board president, at LILA's spacious downtown office. An organization by and for the disabled community, LILA operated out of people's homes before a rare state seed grant allowed it to move to this office in April. With no other state funding, LILA relies on grassroots, church, private and corporate support for the disabled community.

Many of the people closely involved in planning ES know firsthand the experience of its intended listeners. Organ, who chairs LILA's Eugene Sounds Committee, is blind, as is Rob Cook, its previous chair. And Jerry DeLaunay, a key supporter of ES and program director of Golden Hours, an OPB radio reading and information service in Portland, is blind as well.

A 28-year-old radio service for the blind that served as the inspiration for ES, Golden Hours broadcasts over the web and through the SAP channel on TV. Much of the reason ES is poised to launch so soon is the partnership set up between LILA, Golden Hours, and OMNI, a nonprofit media network established by DeLaunay.

Organ proposed the idea for such radio service in Eugene to DeLaunay many years ago, but it was only recently that serious planning began. A UO journalism intern, Molly Wolfsehr, worked closely with Rob Cook at LILA during the early stages, learning about other web-based radio services, discussing programming, finding donations, and preparing fliers. A senior, she graduated and moved to Portland, and Organ took over from Cook in heading ES in July. Throughout, there was DeLaunay.

"If you've got Jerry (DeLaunay) working with you, you're in good hands," says Bev Rushing, president of the American Council for the Blind in Oregon.

Rushing supports the idea for such a radio service in Eugene. She knows many blind people interested in newspaper readings done by Golden Hours, and especially in hearing the local grocery ads, "because we can't read them."

LILA's Patterson explains that ES tackles a similar purpose. "There's a wide variety of materials that aren't open to people who can't read -- the Torch, the Emerald, Eugene Weekly, The Register-Guard, voter pamphlets, and local business newspapers," Patterson says.

Eugene's radio service would initially include reading community newspapers, articles of local interest, and even volunteers' favorite books on the air. Later plans include broadcasting the work of local writers and poets in their own voices, highlighting area musicians, and covering local events live.

With a tiny studio nestled inside LILA's office, ES is gearing up for its inaugural broadcast with equipment donated by OPB and OMNI. Despite its own budget issues (Golden Hours is broadcasting fewer hours starting this September for lack of funding), OPB scraped up enough funds to pay for the basic streaming service from Live365.com for ES. It also donated a mixing board.

OMNI provided the rest of the equipment -- an assortment of streaming and monitoring computers, a CD changer, and mini-disk CD units. Although this equipment is really on loan to LILA, DeLaunay says that the loan "is not the issue" and will not be taken back. He explains that future plans, like for any other nonprofit group, aim at raising the funds to buy new studio equipment for ES.

"Eugene Sounds' needs will change in time, and it's best to try to fund-raise from that point of view," DeLaunay says. "Will you need a CD burner? A broadcast board? There are many different ways to do this job. The goal is to come up with the best way to tailor it for Eugene Sounds."

However, he admits that funding may remain tight. "Ideally, we should have a grant going in to this project. But the reality is that they're scrounging, we're scrounging. But we have a good basic setup."

OMNI will help LILA raise funds to support ES, and will give technical support and advice. But it will not direct content, DeLaunay emphasizes. "We're not here to tell folks in Eugene how to do things. This is Eugene's service."

EW met DeLaunay at his cluttered Portland office, his staff running in and out, several computers blinking around him and his guide dog stretched in front of his desk. Legally blind, he has headed Golden Hours for the last six years.

DeLaunay plans to train Eugene volunteers on broadcasting techniques next week. Accompanying from Portland to provide technical training will be OPB contractor and computer engineer Larry Bently.

People can help ES both by reading on air and working on broadcast production, says Cook, who chaired LILA's ES committee until July.

Volunteer training is scheduled for Sept. 16, 17 and 18 at LILA's office. Interested people can visit the LILA office or call 607-7020.

But is it legal?

With the ongoing controversy over digital copyrights, web-based radio services have seen their share of litigation. However, reading services for the disabled, like Golden Hours and ES, are safe from the controversy.

That's because materials read on air are already available in print. "We are only translating (them) into a different medium," says Patterson.

"Technically," says DeLaunay, "Golden Hours and Eugene Sounds are exempt from copyrights because they're targeted to the blind and disabled. There's no money that changes hands, and we're not paid to read anything."

However, DeLaunay acknowledges the strict conditions under which the copyright exemptions exist. Any volunteer reading must follow certain rules: The material must have been previously published; it must be read exactly as published, without editorializing or changing in any way; and the material must be credited to the writer, original publication and publisher.

So when you read a book, you read the front cover, inside flap, and back cover as well. "You can't just read one favorite story out of a whole book of short stories. You have to present the whole package in the interest of copyright," says DeLaunay.

So how do you tune in?

Of course, the whole purpose of a radio reading service is to work around the limitations of blindness. So how does someone with poor or no vision easily access the Internet to listen to ES?

One has to understand, says DeLaunay, that "there is blind, and then there is blind." DeLaunay is still able to read and write large print at very close range. For such individuals, the easiest way to access ES is to go through the specially designed OMNI website www.omnimedianetworks.org. It's a text-only site with high contrast colors and large white print on a black background to make screen reading as easy as possible. The link to ES would appear directly on the site. LILA's own large-text website www.lilaoregon.org is under construction but should feature an ES link by October.

Screen reading software is also available to convert written web pages into spoken words. Organ and DeLaunay both use software called JAWS by Freedom Scientific, which allows them to surf the web with the help of a speech synthesizer. However, such screen reading software can be prohibitively expensive. Someone unable to read extra large print or afford software will probably need a sighted person's help to navigate the link to ES.

What's next for ES?

Several opportunities are coming up for ES to practice its reporting skills as well. The Oregon chapters of the American Council of the Blind and the National Federation of the Blind will be holding separate annual conventions in Eugene in October, providing a chance for the fledgling radio service to stream live coverage of important events to the blind community.

"You can do pioneering things on the web," says DeLaunay, who feels this is the golden age of the Internet, like radio's 60 years ago. With traditional radio, "you have to look at the bottom line. But with web-based radio, you have a way of reaching more people without restrictions, of trying different things that you'd be afraid of otherwise on the air. There's more freedom that way." And so with a few computers, a tiny downtown studio, and some volunteer help, ES will soon be in business.