For one thing, he speaks rather slowly, and with great clarity. I was reminded of some movies I've seen lately, where I could barely decipher the slurred talk of the young stars but could get every word when a classically trained Briton like Pete Postlethwaite came on the screen. John Corrigan, the manager of the recorded periodicals department of ASB, auditions volunteers, giving them word lists to test their pronunciation and trying their skill with articles that feature several voices. Taking me on a quick tour of his crowded domain, Corrigan showed me the sound booths where many of his 100-plus readers record magazines and books on tape. Some, like Gebhardt, typically work at home and send in the reels.
Postage is free, by the way, for all materials used by the blind.
It's one of the great unsung services of the federal government. Your regular cassette runs 90 minutes and has two tracks for stereo. We record at half speed and use each track separately, which gives us six hours per cassette. We send out about 25,000 copies a year to individuals and libraries, but we're probably serving quite a bit more. In case you wondered, the reader inserts a beep at the beginning of the tape and after each article or section read.