Blind receive Guardian newspaper via home computer

Adapted extract from an item in the Guardian by Peter Large.

The Guardian newspaper's computers are now disgorging the full news text of the paper every night over British Telecom data lines to AirCall Teletext, which then uses the same technology that produces teletext pages of news on the home TV screen to broadcast the Guardian to blind users' home computers.

'Computer software enables the blind customer to search the whole paper, using key words, in less than four minutes'

The RNIB's new technical development department, in a project led by Cathy Rundle, has written computer software that enables the customer to search the whole paper, using key words, in less than four minutes.

There is a braille version available as well as the microchip-generated voice version. The whole package costs at least L1,500, with six local authority libraries - at Ashton-under Lyne, Exeter, Gateshead, Leicester, Paisley and Sheffield - providing a trial service.

The Guardian sees the trials as the initial route to instant delivery of newspapers to customers' home computers for screen reading or print-out.

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