A TALKING newspaper that keeps those with sight problems up to date with local news wants to help even more people after learning thousands could benefit from their services.

Every week, volunteers at the Didcot, Abingdon and Wantage Talking Newspaper (DAWN) meet up and hit record as one of them reads out loud a selection of articles from regional newspapers.

They then send a memory stick containing the recording to their listeners and lend portable MP3 players to those who need them, all free of charge.

After having honed the art of reading the news for more than 20 years, DAWN now helps about 100 blind and partially sighted people keep up to date with the news every week.

Tony Gillman, 69, one of the founding members in 1993 and now the newspaper’s chairman, went to the annual conference of the Talking News Federation in September, heard statistics about the number of blind and partially sighted people in the region and came back convinced they could do more.

He said: “In our area alone, there might be as many as 2,900 people with sight loss who could benefit from our talking newspaper.”

DAWN used to record the news on old-school tapes but went digital in 2011.

The digital revolution has sped up the group’s work so much that it’s now keen to hear from more people it could help.

“Handling the memory sticks is much faster. We could do a lot more and send it out to a lot more people,” Mr Gillman added. “It’s a shame we’re not finding those people.”

Mr Gillman’s parents were both affected by macular degeneration, a deterioration of the most sensitive part of the retina making it hard to distinguish images, writing and faces, as people grow older.

He said: “It is a distressing fact of life that old age tends to bring on these disabling conditions.

“We try to ameliorate and improve that for people when we can.”

And because it focuses on South Oxfordshire, Mr Gillman said, DAWN offers more localised news than many radio broadcasts.

Jean Smith, a retired legal secretary of River Close, Abingdon, has been a listener for about two years.

A glaucoma diagnosis five years ago left her right eye completely blind.

The sight in her left eye deteriorated later on due to retinal vein occlusion, a condition in which small veins carrying blood from the retina get blocked.

The 88-year-old added: “The talking newspaper is very, very useful because it gives you all the things that are going on locally.

“With a magnifying glass I can read a little bit but it’s so tedious. They go through all the local newspapers and pick out all the interesting bits.”

Visit dawntn.org.uk