Nonprofit, volunteers record textbooks for reading-challenged

By Mark Abromaitis
THE ERICKSON TRIBUNE

School is hard enough— English literature, American history, environmental science, linear algebra. Now imagine you’re required to pass a test in one of those subjects and you can’t read.

For many that’s a reality. But one organization is doing its best to help those who can’t read due to sight or learning disability.

Recording for the Blind & Dyslexic (RFB&D), a national nonprofit organization, serves more than 146,000 students from kindergarten through graduate school and beyond with its collection of educational titles on audio CD.

Spokesman for RFB&D Mark Zustovich says that the organization began as a service for the blind in 1948, but has since grown to provide digitally recorded textbooks as learning tools for students with all types of print disabilities.

A big need
“The biggest thing is just getting the word out that a service like this even exists,” Zustovich says. “We are well known in the blind community, but serving those with other print disabilities is a whole other ballgame.”

Zustovich says that the organization is currently helping more than 150,000 people with print disabilities, but that there are over two million in the U.S. alone who could benefit from the organization’s services.

Hands-on help
Most of the help comes from volunteers, Zustovich says. Some 7,200 volunteers in 29 studios across the U.S. record, edit, and produce the textbooks used by RFB&D.

John Burghart, who lives at Maris Grove, an Erickson community in Glen Mills, Pa., volunteers at the Philadelphia chapter. Helping the organization has been a passion of his for years. Every week he operates the audio recorder that captures what the reader says and then helps install the page turn alerts in the recordings.