DAWN Talking Newspaper (Didcot, Abingdon and Wantage)

Local news, read aloud every week

DAWN, the Didcot, Abingdon and Wantage Talking Newspaper, is a registered charity (number 1019718) that makes weekly audio recordings of the Didcot, Abingdon and Wantage newspapers for blind and partially sighted people, free of charge.

Each week DAWN posts the recording to every listener on a USB memory stick, which the listener posts back. There is no charge or cost to listeners, because Royal Mail does not charge to deliver articles for the blind. DAWN also provides free portable MP3 players to listeners who need them, and the recordings can be heard on smart speakers, online and as a podcast.

DAWN is run by volunteers from the Abingdon Health and Wellbeing Centre on Audlett Drive, Abingdon. Its committee of up to twelve elected people is drawn from volunteers and recipients, and by its constitution three committee members are visually impaired. All committee members are trustees, and all are unpaid.

Volunteering with DAWN

Recording takes place on Wednesday evenings from 7pm for just over an hour. The USB sticks are copied straight after recording, and the administration team packs them for the postman to collect the next morning. Each volunteer gets a quarterly rota in advance showing the weeks they are needed, and about ten volunteers are needed on a typical evening.

• Editor: reads the Abingdon, Didcot and Wantage papers, which come out on Wednesday morning, and chooses around thirty articles and a Thought for the Week.
• Readers: four each week, taking turns to read articles around a table. A mixed-up word is no problem, as it is simple to re-record. New readers do a short, very informal audition by reading a brief news item into a microphone.
• Recording Engineer: makes the master recording on a laptop and small mixing desk, and adds the DAWN jingle and a selection of RNIB magazine articles.
• Copying Engineer: erases returned sticks and copies the master onto the hundred or so sticks for listeners.
• Administration: opens and logs returned pouches, deals with messages, and packs and sorts the outgoing pouches by postcode.

To see how your skills could help, phone or email DAWN to arrange a visit on a Wednesday evening from about 6.45pm.

More than thirty years of talking news

DAWN was started by Kim Miller, then Rehabilitation Officer for visually impaired people in Oxfordshire, who noticed that South Oxfordshire lacked a talking news service. It was publicly launched in Abingdon on 18 February 1993, and on Thursday 15 April 1993 ten volunteers produced the first weekly tape, sent to around 90 listeners. DAWN became a registered charity in 1993, with the mayors of Didcot, Abingdon and Wantage as its patrons.

DAWN recorded at the Abingdon Community Hospital for 16 years, before moving to its current home at the Abingdon Health and Wellbeing Centre. In April 2011 it switched from cassette tapes to digitally recorded memory sticks, which are more durable, give better sound and record each news item as a separate track. The changeover was paid for by a grant from the Gannett Foundation.

DAWN celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary in 2018. Its history page records more than 1,200 editions and over 150,000 tapes or memory sticks sent out since it began. DAWN is one of over 520 talking newspaper groups affiliated to the Talking Newspaper Federation, but is otherwise completely independent.