About the N.B.R.S.

The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates the number of blind people worldwide exceeds 150 million. Every seven minutes in North America someone loses their eyesight. Two million Canadians have vision restrictions that impair their quality of life. As many more are unable to access print for psychological, neurological or physiological reasons.

Aging has been cited as the leading cause of blindness. There is consensus that the baby boom population will exponentially increase the number of persons with vision impairments. But it is expected that the strength and influence of this generation will alter greatly the historical public perception that having a disability necessitates living less than a full, active, meaningful life.

Vision-restricted people have varied interests, priorities, news and entertainment needs and are consumers along with their sighted counterparts. They live in family settings and represent a diversity of educational and socio-economic groups.

The NBRS mandate is to enhance access to visual media for vision- and print-restricted Canadians through the services and products produced by its two divisions – VoicePrint and AudioVision Canada.

NBRS, a not-for-profit registered charity, was established in 1989 to set up and operate VoicePrint, Canada's national reading service.

Licensed by the CRTC, VoicePrint depends upon hundreds of volunteers to produce full-text readings of published news stories for broadcast across Canada. The service reaches more than 8 million homes and listeners can access VoicePrint via satellite, cable and direct-to-home services.

NBRS launched AudioVision Canada (AVC) in 1995. AVC currently is Canada's only audio description production centre. Movies and TV programs are made more enjoyable for blind/low-vision viewers and their family and friends with the addition of a soundtrack that describes the key visual elements essential to the story line.