An Aberystwyth service that has brought the news to blind people across Ceredigion for more than 50 years is making progress on plans to relaunch, but ‘still has many strides to take.’

The Aberystwyth Talking Newspaper for the Blind PSCTN was the first talking newspaper service to launch in the whole of the UK.

The service provided bilingual spoken news highlights from the Cambrian News, Y Cymro and Golwg free of charge to almost 150 local blind and partially sighted people.

The service fell silent when the Covid-19 pandemic struck, and their home for the last 50 years in the Ceredigion County Council offices closed.

Since then, the council’s work from home scheme has prevented them from returning.

After almost four years of silence, and what looked like ‘all doom and gloom.’ There were murmurs of hope in a volunteer meeting in Llanbadarn’s Church Hall.

The meeting of just under 20 people brought the services ‘many steps ahead’ according to acting Chairman Syd Smith, and brought back the ‘barebones’ of a team.

On top of that, it was announced that the service is moving ahead with plans to find a new home in the Hahav centre in Aberystwyth.

But there are still many ‘strides’ the group needs to take before the service can return.

Mr Smith, who has been a part of the team since it began in 1970, said: “We made many steps in last night’s meeting, but we still have many strides we need to take. We’ve come out of it with the barebones of a team and a potential home in Hahav’s Centre in Aberystwyth.

“For 50 years the Talking Newspaper has worked. Robert Sturt founded the talking Newspaper with no money, no equipment, and no experience - we’ve got all of that.

The group are appealing to anyone in the area to volunteer for one of a variety of roles in the team, from background work in editing, copying and cutting stories, to reading stories in Welsh.

Mr Smith said: “The one thing we are very short of is people to look through the newspapers and edit pieces that they think are going to be useful for people to listen to.

“We need what we call cutters, people who cut out articles from the newspapers for our readers to read out for our listeners.”

To volunteer or get in touch with the Talking Newspaper, email: [email protected]