Newspapers and Vision Loss: Yes, It's Still Possible!

Hadley

Newspapers and Vision Loss: Yes, It’s Still Possible!

Presented by Ricky Enger

Ricky Enger: With vision loss, you might find that you're missing essential parts of your routine, like catching up on the news or reading your favorite magazines. In this episode, Hadley's Steve Kelley joins us to discuss NFB-Newsline, a service for accessing publications and news via audio. I'm Ricky Enger, and this is Hadley Presents. Welcome to the show, Steve.

Steve Kelley: Hey, Ricky. Thanks for having me.

Ricky Enger: It is really good to have you here, as always. And the funny part about all this is each time you're here, I feel like we at least make a reference to NFB-Newsline, and we've never had a chance to expand on it before, until now.

Steve Kelley: There could be a reason for that. As we've chatted about before, it's like one of those essential services that I think we would recommend to everybody, but then when they ask what is it and what is it about, we pause, right? Because it just goes on and on. There are just so many different ways to approach it.

Ricky Enger: Yeah. It's hard to sum it up simply, but I think that's really where we should start. So if you're having to give someone a quick elevator pitch about not so much how to access Newsline because we'll get into that, but really what is it? What does it do?

Steve Kelley: When I was seeing people face-to-face, you know what I heard most of the time? We still hear it when we pick up the phone here at Hadley is, "I miss reading the newspaper." A lot of folks with an acquired vision loss might say, "I can still read the headlines or something like that," but they're just not able to read the smaller print. And honestly, I think the print in newspapers has gotten smaller over the years. And so next to driving, that seems to be the big one. So the elevator pitch is you want to get back to reading your newspaper and magazines again? Well, NFB-Newsline is the way to do it.

Ricky Enger: That's perfect, actually. I mean, if you're going to catch someone's interest, it's like, "Hey, here's this problem that you have and now here's a way to solve it." I know when people hear the name, NFB-Newsline, it's actually a little bit confusing because you have this random string of letters and then Newsline. What in the world is that? So I think it's worth mentioning how the name came about. The NFB portion of this stands for National Federation of the Blind, and that is an American organization. So people who are losing their vision or who are totally blind are members of this organization. They do a lot of great advocacy. They have conventions each year. They can get you in touch with local and national resources, but it is worth noting you don't have to be a member of NFB in order to be a part of NFB Newsline.

The Newsline portion of things seems a little bit self-explanatory because you've got the news part. The line part actually comes from how this started initially, which was entirely phone-based. So we'll talk about different ways to access it here in just a bit. But yeah, if someone is having a hard time reading the newspaper or they're missing that favorite magazine, how do you get signed up for NFB-Newsline?

Steve Kelley: I think it's pretty simple. The two ways that I would think of is... And again, this is going to bring up another one of these acronyms, but the National Library Service in each state is a place where a person can call if they've already signed up for Talking Books. And if they haven't, then there's an 800 number at the National Federation of the Blind that you can call, and they'll get you set up with an application.

Ricky Enger: It's 866-504-7300, and we'll have that in our show notes, or you can just call us here at Hadley and we'll get that to you as well. But yeah, you can give them a call or get in touch with your NLS branch. And if you're wondering what NLS is, we have a podcast for that too, which we'll have in the show notes. Definitely an incredible service that you want to want to be a part of if you're missing reading things. And speaking of reading things, one question always comes up, which is, NFB stands for National Federation of the Blind. Does that mean I have to totally blind to access this service? Like you said earlier, for some people, "Yeah, I can still read the headlines, so maybe this isn't for me."

Steve Kelley: I think that's one of the most interesting things, and it's one of my little soap boxes probably because I've experienced it myself. I think a lot of times when people are starting to have difficulty with their vision, it usually starts where it's just small stuff. You can't read the newsprint anymore, or the mail or something like that. The last thing people want to do is identify as somebody who's blind because they're not. They have low vision, or they have difficulty seeing, or however they choose to describe it to themselves. I think that sometimes if you recommend Newsline from the National Federation of the Blind, all of a sudden that in itself is just a barrier because that person often is not identifying themselves as blind. I think that it's just important to remind folks, both with Talking Books and with the Newsline that any kind of print disability, and even that's a tough word for people to get around sometimes too, but anybody who's having difficulty reading print for whatever reason is eligible for NFB-Newsline.

Ricky Enger: Yeah, because there's some really cool stuff that you can access on Newsline.

Steve Kelley: Oh, yeah.

Ricky Enger: There's maybe a lot that you're missing. There was a member of Hadley telling her story and one of the things that she said was, "I'm retired, and I was looking forward to reading and now I can't and I thought I had to give that up and no, indeed you do not."

Steve Kelley: Trivia question, do you know from your reading, how many publications are available on NFB-Newsline?

Ricky Enger: I want to say it's over 500, and it may be well over 500, but I know that it is at least that. So that actually brings up an interesting question. We talk about publications and that could be anything. So what exactly can you get on NFB Newsline?

Steve Kelley: Well, I think the breakdown is that there's 300 plus newspapers, then I think there's something like 60 or more magazines, all kinds of magazines. And then you have AP Wire Service, you have TV listings, you have classifieds and the weather. So you've got a wide variety of different publications and information resources, all just from Newsline once you have signed up.

Ricky Enger: And depending on where you are, you can also get access to those little circulars that the grocery stores do. So if you're still doing shopping, not through Instacart, you're actually going to the store and picking out your stuff, it could be really helpful to know what's available in the ad that week. For my area, it just shows Target, but I think that is location dependent. You may end up having a lot more in your area depending on what stores you have and so on.

Steve Kelley: Oh, yeah. I think a lot of it just depends on what the publications send over to Newsline on a daily basis. I think it's also worth pointing out too, there are only three states that do not participate in Newsline, North Dakota, Alaska, and Wyoming, but every other state is a participant in Newsline and it's free.

Ricky Enger: Hey, free. We love free. Free is good.

Steve Kelley: I know. Isn't that awesome?

Ricky Enger: So do you happen to remember what your first experience with Newsline was? What did you end up reading?

Steve Kelley: I think I was reading one of the local newspapers here in Maine and I was accessing it using my work phone, which had a touchpad on it and also a smartphone. I've used a flip phone as well, but that was my first introduction. I'm not even sure that they had the mobile app or a lot of the other features available at that time. It was just learning the different commands based on the numbers that you pressed.

Ricky Enger: Right. I think for me, the first thing I accessed wasn't a newspaper. I did get into that later, but I was ecstatic to find that I could get Rolling Stone on Newsline. I love music and I grew up with my sighted friends reading from the music magazines, which was a great bonding thing in some ways, but in other ways, it was really annoying because there might be bands that I was into that they weren't and so convincing them, "Yeah, you got to read this story of the band you hate," not so much. So being able to read Rolling Stone was amazing. Then I discovered, living across the country from my family, I was always curious, "Hey, what's going on back in my little small town that I grew up in?" And it turns out that not only can I read my local newspaper, but I can check in on that newspaper in my hometown as well, and I was just so surprised. I mean, it's a town of 20-something thousand people, and yet, the newspaper is there for me to browse through.

Steve Kelley: I wonder to what degree that's unusual because I do notice that when I look at some of the state publications, that some states have a bunch of publications and then others, for example, mine in Maine, we just have two publications. Each state has got a wide variety of smaller local papers, and sometimes those are the ones where you really get the meat of what's going on in your community.

Ricky Enger: Yeah, exactly. I think something that many people listening tend to think about when we mention some new service that is going to give them something back, something that could be life changing. There's always that sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach that maybe this works for some people, but I'm just not very tech-savvy, I don't care to be, I really just want my info back. So is this even appropriate for me? Are there ways that I can access it that doesn't involve learning a brand-new piece of technology or what have you?

Steve Kelley: That is such a great question. So the short answer is if you're comfortable with a landline or a flip phone, then that's the way to access NFB-Newsline. You get a username and a passcode, and you just put that in the first time you call. Then after that, each time you call the phone number and there are local numbers for each state, you can listen to the newspaper right on the phone pressing the buttons. It's that simple.

And then for those folks who are comfortable with their mobile phones, there's an app on the iPhone. I use an Android phone, so I use the Dolphin EasyReader app, which is relatively accessible, and you can also get it on the computer or the Victor Reader Stream, and on, and on, and on. Maybe that's where people get bogged down or we get bogged down too. It's like, wow, there's so many different ways to do it, but don't panic. If what you're accustomed to is just your flip phone or your landline, you can do it.

Ricky Enger: Yeah, I love that. They've made an effort to make it simple to get in. Like you said, you get that six-digit code and then a four-digit pin or passcode or whatever you want to call it. And once you have logged in for the first time from your phone, it knows that you're calling from this number. You don't have to enter this every time. I hesitate to say this. I don't want to trigger people's assistants, but the Amazon Echo, the A-L-E-X-A, you can get it from that as well. So you just have to say the name of the assistant and then open NFB-Newsline, and then it will talk you through what you need to do to get logged into that.

One of the really cool things if you're doing this from the phone app is that not only do you have access to the material on NFB-Newsline, but there is a scanning feature that will allow you to basically take pictures of print and get that read aloud to you as well, so that's pretty cool. And if you're feeling like your head is spinning a bit, here at Hadley we are happy if you’d like to ask some questions and drill down on what the best way might be to access it for you.

Steve Kelley: Oh yeah, absolutely. Again, this is diving a little bit into the deep end, but you can even put the sound files on the cartridges that go in the Talking Book player. So maybe you've got somebody at home, or you've got that 12-year-old that knows how to do all this stuff, they can just put all that information on your talking book player. You pop the cartridge in, you hit the play button, and you can listen to your newspaper. I mean, they've really broken it down so that pretty much whatever device you happen to have handy and at whatever level of technology you happen to be, there's something that's going to be convenient, portable. They've just made it super easy; I think.

Ricky Enger: Yeah, I think so too, and I think that's what I would leave people with. I'll ask you about final thoughts too, but I would just say to people, whether you've never had that opportunity to read your local news or maybe national or international news in a way that is simple, not full of ads, or you're having to wait for someone to read that to you, or maybe you are accustomed to doing that. You're used to having your coffee and checking out your newspaper and now you're finding that you can't do that, this is just an amazing service, and there's really nothing to lose by calling that 800 number or calling us here at Hadley or checking the show notes to figure out how to get signed up for that. Anything you would add to that, Steve?

Steve Kelley: Yeah, for sure. As somebody who's been in that boat myself, I was actually a circulation director at a newspaper for about 10 years, and so newspapers were a big deal for me. When I started having difficulty reading the newspaper, I felt like the world was collapsing on me just because I didn't have that access to the stuff that I really enjoyed. And as I was telling you a couple of weeks ago, with the Dolphin Easy Reader, when things are loaded in there, I can skim through the newspaper the way I used to do it before, where you just go and you read the headline and it's like, "I don't want to read that."

Ricky Enger: That's a really good point.

Steve Kelley: And you flick through, and you finally find the one that you want, and you hit the play button, and it reads it and it's just so empowering and so amazing. And we talk to people who sometimes have been beaten down by just where they happen to be, and this is one of those things where you get back into the game and get back into the things that you were doing, just in a different way. I just think it's so empowering. So I can't say enough about trying something like this and doing it, even if it's a little different. Just give it a whirl. As you said, it's free, right? So what have you got to lose?

Ricky Enger: It's free. Yes, exactly. Wow. And what a perfect way to sum that up. Maybe it's a little different way of reading than you're accustomed to, but that power to make the choice about this is a thing I want to learn more about, or this is the magazine I miss reading. This is a way for you to do that. So yeah, thanks so much, Steve, for sharing not only some of the mechanics of how to do this, but just some of your own experience of being on the other side and being a little reluctant, and then what this has given back to you in a way.

Steve Kelley: Oh, it's great to be here. Thanks so much, Ricky. I appreciate it.

Ricky Enger: Thanks for listening.

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