|
|
||
|
|
|
Terry Bass is one of six RSVP members who volunteer on a regular basis at the Redondo Beach studio of a National Organization called "Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic". The Redondo Beach studio is one of three similar studios located in the Los Angeles area and Terry graciously arranged for me to spend some time at the facility.
 |
While Terry was busy at a recording session and would join us later, Studio Director, Dan Holt, started me on a tour of the office. A total of 150 volunteers and four staff are occupied here, transferring the text and illustrations of standard text books from a visual format into an audio format so that it can be readily accessed by students who are blind or dyslexic. |
| Photos of some of the many volunteers displayed over the "snack bar". |
Dan told me that this particular studio is primarily involved in transposing College text books into this format although they also produce texts for High School work. The subjects covered included Law; Medical; Financial Planning; Science; Geography; Math (including Algebra and Computing); and occasionally Marketing, among many other items. After about three to six months of training, volunteers not only get to read the text but describe all the visuals, using standard names for symbols whenever possible. He told me that the books covered at this studio depend a lot on the type of volunteers who become available. For example, this studio currently has a large number of retired engineers transposing the text from several math books.
There are 32 studios doing this type of work nationwide and some 200,000 registered borrowers for the service, with 20,000 in the Los Angeles area alone. Dan also said that, although this particular studio concentrates on the available areas of volunteer expertise, the audio copies of the finished texts end up being distributed all over the country.
| Terry finished his recording session and joined us as we moved into one of the six recording rooms. Each of these rooms contains a sound-proof booth where the volunteer works on the text of the book he is involved with. Sometimes the reader has a partner located outside the booth who acts as the director for the session. The director acts as the Quality Control element and listens along while the text is read to make sure that everything is read correctly. He also does duty as the Recording Engineer, keeping the sound levels within bounds and assuring that the index tags are inserted at the appropriate places. |  |
| A typical Recording Room. |
 |
Terry told me that he has been working as a volunteer with RFB&D for the past fourteen years. He started when he was still employed full time and was only able to put in the standard commitment of two hours per week at that time. However, now that he is retired he tells me that he normally conducts two sessions a week of four hours each. Where most volunteer organizations operate on a nine-to-five basis five days a week, this studio is also open for evening sessions so as to take full advantage of the time that can be put in by those volunteers who are still working. |
| Terry Bass and Studio Director, Dan Holt. |
I was told that it normally takes about a year to finish a single book and that this can involve four or five different readers taking a total of 100-150 hours of recording time to complete. Students say that they are not bothered by the presence of different voices within the text, as long as each volunteer puts a bit of enthusiasm into his reading. Specific areas also need people who are familiar with the subject. For example, a section on optics needs to be read by optics people, so different voices are not felt to be a problem.
The studio operates a total of six recording booths. However,
work on a given book is currently locked into the computer hard
drive of a particular booth. Because of the restrictions this
imposes, the studio is in the process of constructing a network
that ties all the booths to a central server. When completed,
this will enable much more flexibility in that any free booth
would become available for any book to be worked on.
When the recording of a book is finished, the complete text is transferred to a 9.4 Gigabyte DVD and sent to the Organization Head Quarters in Princeton. There it is checked before being put on CDs for distribution. The advantage of the CD over the previous cassette tape method is that students will now be able to navigate through a book by going directly to a page or chapter without having to search using a tape reader’s fast-forward button etc. Dan said that the CD distribution system is currently about a year away from going into effect but is being tested at ten or eleven colleges throughout the States. However, he was also proud to say that this particular studio was the first in the country to go completely digital.
| As there is still a large need to supply tape versions to current students, the studio also has an area where it is possible to transfer a given installment from a CD onto several cassettes for distribution to specific students at local schools and colleges. |  |
If you are interested in getting involved in this worthwhile endeavor it can be arranged through RSVP. Dan told me that Readers are always needed. For somebody who knows the subject they will be reading, training normally involves finding out how to use the equipment along with about three to six months of practice in all other aspects.
