 communications involving public business must be retained and made available for the public inspection. As part of its mission to serve the community, WJCT provides a sub-channel radio reading service for people who have difficulty seeing and handling print material. The service is largely powered by volunteer readers who love what they do. It's good to see President Barack Obama ban federal employees from text messaging while driving on government business. I've been volunteering here at WJCT for a little over two years now. Well, I motivated the radio reading service. I've done it before. I did it in New York for about 14 years for in-touch networks. And it's something that is needed, but not only is it needed, I get tremendous gratification and satisfaction from coming in and reading the Times Union to people who are blind or otherwise print impaired. I've been listening to the radio reading service since it came onto the air 16 years ago. The nature of my particular issue requiring the need for the reading service is that I'm visually impaired and I've got an eye condition called retinitis pigmentosa, which over time causes the loss of sight down to a certain level. And 16, 20 years ago, I was able to read the newspaper a little better than I can read print now. People living with blindness or a physical disability have called the service a communication lifeline. The round the clock programming offers readings from national and local newspapers and magazines. Grants and other contributions to the service go to help pay for the special pre-tuned radios that we loan free to the listeners who need and request them. Everyone involved with radio reading knows what a valuable resource it is to the community. Dog cartoon of the day. We go on to Marmaduke and Marmaduke and his mom are out for a walk and they're going by the pamper your pet shop. The way it would impact my life if the radio station would be, you know, discontinued, it would like be totally, I mean, to do that it would just keep me out of touch with what's going on in the world. Sasha, and Sasha has a report card where she's got... The number of Americans experiencing vision loss or physical disabilities rises every day. The radio reading service depends upon your support to empower and enrich the lives of people who use it in Northeast Florida and Southeast Georgia. When you read your local news you are giving them an in-depth feeling of the news rather than your 15 second sound bite. So the people that are listening to us are getting just that much more of the news. How many people? I don't know, but we feel a very close contact to each one of the people. That's on the other side of our mic. 100 of those workers may have had serious criminal records. The radio reading service for me is a vital source of local information and as far as the newspaper's concerned. I'm aware that they lost funding from the state of Florida and I believe they also lost funding from a city grant which helped support the service as well. So from what I've come to learn, the financial situation at the reading service is somewhat dire right now. ...advisor. And Loretta says to Leroy... It's extraordinary. I'm completely and totally disabled and as part of that I'm legally blind. I can't drive anymore. I used to teach. All of my students are gone. Some really cut off from everybody. I'm a shut-in, shut-out, but I'm happy to be that way. And this service is wonderful. It keeps me in touch with the rest of the world. I get to hear the music. You read books. I mean, it's great. Thanks for taking a moment to learn more about WJCT's radio reading service. If you've helped us in the past or you will in the future, we appreciate your support.