Radio Broadcasting and Schools for the Blind: Existing Programs and Fledgling Student-Run Station at the Arizona State Schools for the Deaf and the Blind

Because radio has always been a nonvisual medium, and all listeners receive the same information at the same time from the airwaves regardless of visual condition, radio is a medium in which blind or visually impaired individuals are equal participants, whether as consumers or producers. Since audio description is built into radio scripts and dialogue--sound effects convey the illustrations and ambiance and voices give the color and variety to the program--audio recording and radio broadcasting might seem like natural and obvious components to the high school curriculum at any of the specialized schools for students who are visually impaired. However, with a few exceptions, such programs are not provided at schools for students who are visually impaired in the United States. This article intends to address the importance of instruction in audio production at schools for the blind throughout the United States. It will also discuss the fledgling news format of the student-run radio station at the Arizona State Schools for the Deaf and the Blind (ASDB), which offers digital journalism as an elective course for students who have expressed interest and aptitude in producing radio broadcast stories and features for the campus community. The digital journalism program at ASDB had few models to draw from, and is perhaps slowly blazing the trail for the creation of an audio-production curriculum specifically for blind students. DESCRIPTIONS OF EXISTING PROGRAMS Programs at schools In order to learn more about existing digital journalism programs for individuals who are blind, I contacted 32 state schools for blind and visually impaired students for this article. Five schools indicated that they provide formal instruction in broadcasting or teaching the fundamentals of recording, editing, and producing audio using accessible software for the purpose of broadcasting. Two of those five--Washington State School for the Blind and Perkins School for the Blind in Massachusetts--offer audio broadcasting programs. Radio Perkins streams their broadcasts via the Internet. West Virginia School for the Blind is the pioneer in this area, having offered broadcasting as a class since 1973. The school airs news, music, and features from the campus-based WVSB radio studio. WKSB is broadcast for a few miles around Kentucky School for the Blind on a low power FM station. The station, 95.1 FM, was established in 1978 and is broadcast out of Evans Hall, one of the campus dormitories. Other schools, such as Indiana School for the Blind and Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired, offer ham radio operation as a recreational club or elective class, and South Dakota School for the Blind and Visually Handicapped has produced radio drama productions. In Arkansas, students can take a multimedia class through an off-campus technical school. Kansas State School for the Blind created a music and production studio in 2008, with the goal of increasing employment opportunities in the area of audio production. As of December 2011, however, the Kansas school was no longer offering radio or audio production classes. Other programs Often, mention of "radio for the blind" refers to a reading service in which sighted individuals read newspapers, books, grocery ads, and other print materials for the benefit of blind or visually impaired individuals. In Tucson, Arizona, this service is called Sun Sounds. Many of the students at ASDB do not use the service and, in fact, this style of delivery may soon become obsolete given online news sources produced in audio formats, such as podcasts, or newspapers and online news feeds that can be read with screen reading programs such as JAWS for Windows. NFB Newsline provides audio versions of newspapers and other news sources from around the world both online and over the telephone, and users can tailor how they want their news delivered. …