Free audio for the blind

A few months ago we received the following letter from a member of the Rosminians:

Greetings!

Having noticed the recent introduction of audio options into your Divine Office I am wondering if the enclosed would be of any interest to you.

Some years ago a member of our community began to lose his sight and was unable to read the Office. As a result I undertook to record the offices of Readings, Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer. I also purchased an application to to render these recordings in 'Daisy' format so that he could use his RNIB machine to listen to them.

Some time later it occurred to me that they might be welcomed by others with impaired sight and would be a useful extension of the hundreds of hours I spent in their recording! Accordingly I wrote in the publishers, Harper Collins, and got permission to distribute a limited number of copies, on a non-commercial basis, to others registered blind. With this in view I published an advert in the Catholic Herald and produced a simple website - see http://www.advent.cd2.com.

It seems to me that, with the advent of Universalis, and its extension into audio you may be in a position to help a wider spread of people, especially those with sight difficulties.

The enclosed memory card has all the mp3 recordings that were used in the production of the seven CD's and I am hoping that you can further extend their usefulness.

Peace!

Br.Robin IC

We are happy to provide access to Brother Robin's recordings through the Universalis web site. As he says, the publishers' permission is "on a non-commercial basis" and therefore we are making the access free.

Calendar and discrepancies

The recordings are based on an English calendar. If you are using some other calendar then they may therefore be out of step with what you see in the rest of Universalis. In particular, the Epiphany, the Ascension etc are celebrated on Sunday and not on their proper days. Moreover, the recordings were made before 2015, so they do not include the feast of St Mary Magdalen, because her celebration was, at the time of recording, only a memorial and not a feast.

Nevertheless, with all these discrepancies we hope that these recordings will be useful to some people, and we present them in that spirit.