IT'S FRIDAY morning.

Here at the Advertiser office, stories have been submitted and deadlines hit, and although the work for next week has already begun, there’s a sense of ‘mission accomplished’ in the air.

At the printing presses the feeling is mutual. Papers have been printed and delivered to front doors by early-morning risers, and the other side of those doors, readers are preparing to, well, read up on the week’s news.

But for the team at Andover Talking Newspaper – a charity that creates audio recordings of the Andover Advertiser to distribute to the visually impaired – the work is only just beginning.

8am – The editor, who rotates on a weekly basis, heads to the shops to pick up two copies of this week’s Andover Advertiser.

8.30am – He or she meets this week’s producer in the Andover Talking Newspaper recording studio, housed in the basement of Test Valley Borough Council’s Beech Hurst offices.

8.35am – The planning process begins. This involves cutting and condensing the paper into a series of easily digestible storyboards. Meanwhile, the producer gets the week’s recording underway by announcing key headlines, sports stories and any births, deaths and marriages.

9.40am – The readers arrive. A team of four, who again rotate on a weekly basis, gather to read from the carefully prepared storyboards and record the week’s news.

11.20am – With the reading over, it’s time for the distributor to take centre stage. He or she transfers the morning’s recordings onto USB memory sticks, which are then packed up into envelopes and sent out to the dozens of listeners signed up to the service.

1pm – With USB sticks recorded and packed into envelopes, they are taken to the post office to be distributed to the users of the Talking Newspaper service.

There are around 40 volunteers helping out with Andover Talking Newspaper in total. They either read, produce, edit or distribute, depending on which part of the process they feel most comfortable doing.

But there’s another vital part of the service that allows listeners to play back the audio recording once they receive their USBs in the post.

Mike Shellard, chairman of Andover Talking Newspaper, explains: “When we send our memory sticks out to listeners, we have also given our listeners a box on which to play the stick.

“You switch the box on... And then you put the stick in, very simple, and you can go forward, or backwards, pause or indeed turn it off again.”

Listeners can then digest the week’s news as and when they please, before returning the USB sticks in the post.

“And at the end of having listened to your stick for that week,” Mike adds, “you put it back into the envelope, turn the label over, and send it off in the post.

“This costs you nothing. Actually, it costs me nothing either because the Post Office still gives us this service free and they have done ever since after war.”

Talking Newspaper services have been operating in towns and borough across the county since the concept was established in 1970.

The Andover branch recently celebrated its 40th anniversary and is still going strong today, with no shortage of willing volunteers who willingly give up their time to help the service operate.

However, Mike says the charity is facing issues in terms of raising awareness and letting visually impaired people know that the service is available.

“Our problem really is getting the message across to those who need the service,” Mike says.

“In the old days the social services who tip off somebody or even tip us off if there was somebody who they considered was now becoming needy in this way.

“They’re not allowed to do that anymore so we have to try, by word of mouth, put the message across as widely as possible in order to get as many listeners as we can.”

For more information about Andover Talking Newspaper, go to tnf.org.uk or contact Renie Scott on 01264 353998.