‘Win-win partnership’ between Jewish Care and RNIB to assist visually impaired

A Jewish charity and an organisation set up to help people with visual impairment have said they are working together to provide free access to 400 ‘talking books’ of Jewish interest.

The partnership will see Jewish Care’s talking books transferred into the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB)’s library, with a new function allowing users to search for books of Jewish interest. Thanks to this partnership, there are now 400 books of interest in the RNIB library.

RNIB’s collection of over 26,000 Talking Books is available in CD, USB and digital download formats available free of charge for people living with sight loss.

“This is a win-win partnership,” said Sandi Wassmer, Jewish Care’s digital services development manager. “Print impaired Jewish people will now have access to a far wider range of audio content. RNIB offers a far more comprehensive Talking Books service than we ever could.”

Wassmer added that the partnership will enable Jewish Care to free up resources previously allocated to book production to focus on “creating high quality uniquely Jewish audio news, culture and current affairs content including the weekly abridged version of the Jewish News and a monthly audio magazine called Jewish Extra”.