Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic New Jersey Unit: NJN Video transcript

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Recording for the Blind & Dyslexic
New Jersey Unit
69 Mapleton Road
Princeton, New Jersey 08540
Phone 609-750-1830
Fax 609-750-9653

Transcript of NJN Video
Broadcast August 26, 2003

Marie DeNoia [NJN News anchor]: As students get set for the new school year to begin, one New Jersey- based nonprofit has a special role to play in seeing to it that thousands of those students arrive prepared. As Jim Hooker reports, the Recording for the Blind & Dyslexic-New Jersey Unit is busy turning out textbooks and other volumes on tape in time for the fall semester.

Jim Hooker [NJN News reporter]: It's a busy time of year at the Recording for the Blind & Dyslexic studios in Plainsboro where tapes and CD's are being readied for shipping across the state and nation as students prepare to hit the books.

Eleanor Schroder [RFB&D volunteer, reading textbook]: "In particular, they make unrealistic assumptions about how market forces drive technological innovation..."

Jim Hooker: Here the books are read by some 400 volunteers and transferred to tape or CD-ROM for distribution to blind and dyslexic students.

Eleanor Schroder [continuing reading textbook]: "Other developing countries face both costs and benefits..."

Jim Hooker: The service, offered by the national non-profit for a $50 subscription fee, is considered invaluable to those who use it. One client, who is now a financial supporter, was given a subscription by his grandmother as a gift.

Sandi Wilson [RFB&D staff]: And now he's graduated from high school and going on to college, and he said, thanks to us. Thanks to us providing those textbooks on tape that he was able to succeed and now go on to college. And he's taking us with him – to college!

Jim Hooker: The New Jersey Unit is one of thirty operated by the nonprofit nationwide. With its twelve recording booths where volunteers are at work on anywhere from 60 to 70 volumes at a time, it also holds the distinction of being the largest recording studio for the nonprofit.

Because its pool of volunteers includes readers and fact checkers engaged in some of the most demanding professions, the New Jersey Unit also routinely delivers nationwide some of the most technical subject matter in publication, from medicine to engineering to mathematics.

Olivian Boon [RFB&D staff]: We have a 2,000-page book on cardiovascular diseases, and we have physicians in that field who are reading the main part of the text and then we have nurses and physicians who are reading the references.

Jim Hooker: The organization also runs outreach programs to help students in the public schools. The RFB&D is at the tail end of a half million dollar fund raising drive that outfitted its new studios and offices in a building on the grounds of St. Joseph's Seminary.

Volunteers, who range in age from 14 to 90, say the work is as rewarding to them as it is to those on the receiving end.

Retired RCA Laboratories technical staffer Irwin Gordon has been at it 31 years.

Irwin Gordon [RFB&D volunteer]: In my mind it's the highest form of charity where you do not know the recipient and the recipient does not know you.

Eleanor Schroder: I thought this would be a wonderful opportunity for me and hopefully be helpful to the students in school.

Jonathan Kugel [RFB&D volunteer]: I look at it this way: I go to school; my teachers tell me read chapter 1; I groan; I say "Oh, what a terrible thing." Then I think about the people who benefit from us. I take for granted the fact that I can read a textbook.

Jim Hooker, NJN News, Plainsboro.

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