A CHARITY which helps visually impaired people listen to the local news needs new volunteers after being forced to move premises in Oxford.

OXTALK had to leave the home it shared with Radio Cherwell at the Churchill Hospital for more than 30 years after the hospital radio station moved to a smaller studio.

The Oxfordshire Association for the Blind has given the charity a new home by offering up space in its Abingdon Road headquarters once a week.

But the move from Headington to South Oxford has meant some volunteers are unable to continue working for OXTALK, which records news stories from the Oxford Mail so that people with visual impairments can listen to local news.

Chairwoman Margaret Simpson said: “Thankfully the majority of the volunteers are able to continue but we are looking for some new volunteers.

“We need people to select the news items from the Oxford papers, enough for an hour-long recording and also technical officers who will operate the recording desk as well as readers and copiers.

“Our listeners and Oxfordshire County Council’s visual impairment team say that our service is very important because otherwise there is not a local service where they can access the local news.”

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The last edition of OXTALK was recorded on January 20 and it is hoped recording will start again by the end of March.

The group was founded in 1979 and originally put recordings on to cassette tapes.

Now the 45 volunteers send out between 150 and 200 USB flash drives each week to listeners across the county.

Last year the Oxford Mail’s parent company Gannett Media gave OXTALK a grant of £3,000 through its charitable arm the Gannett Foundation.

The money was used to buy 200 USB flash drives.

When it shared premises with Radio Cherwell the charity’s volunteers worked two nights each week, but this will be cut to just Tuesdays at the new site.

Mrs Simpson, who has volunteered with the charity since the early 1980s, said: “At the end of the day it should all still be the same as before. We used to record on a Tuesday and copy on a Wednesday and then the Post Office would collect the USBs on a Thursday.

“Now everything will be done on a Tuesday so we are amalgamating teams.

“The skill you need to be a reader is a reasonably good speaking voice.

“It is as much a case of looking in the papers and selecting the best news items to be read each week as anything else.

“If more people sign up than we have space for we can have people who are reserve readers who fill in when others are on holiday.”

To find out more, visit oxtalk.org.uk