Who We Are
Taping For The Blind, Inc. is an independent non-profit educational organization with a mission to TURN SIGHT INTO SOUND, enriching the lives of individuals with visual, physical and perceptual disabilities. We are funded by corporations and foundations, listeners and individuals like you.
A Brief History
Taping For The Blind, Inc. was founded in 1967 (over 35 years ago), to read material not available through other sources onto standard audio cassettes in our custom recording division.
In 1978, Houston Taping For The Blind Radio (HTBR), a radio reading service, signed on the air. HTBR broadcasts 24 hours daily. HTBR offers the Houston Chronicle and The Wall Street Journal daily, plus several dozen popular magazines and best-selling books are read on the air.
In January 1993, Taping For The Blind, Inc. began a new service: Description for the BlindK, (DBsm), which is the art of talking pictorially. Volunteers provide audio descriptions of visual elements of theater performances, IMAX movies, museum exhibits, television programs and the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo.
Some of Our Numbers
Currently over 3,500 radio receivers are on loan. Specially tuned radio receivers are loaned to qualified clients at no charge.
Broadcast range is a 33 county area (Harris and the surrounding counties), with SCA
and SAP radios and the sideband of Houston Public Television and Houston Public
Radio.
Taping For The Blind’s annual budget is $300,000 for programs and services provided by over 200 volunteers and four full-time staff members.
Taping For The Blind has over 200 volunteers that donate over 18,000 hours of their time each year to programs and services.