RPH Australia is the national peak representative organisaion for a unique Australian network of radio reading service designed to meet the daily information needs of people who, for any reason, are unable to access normal printed material. It is (conservatively) estimated that 18.4% of the Australian population has a print disability - over 3.8 million Australians
Historiacally RPH stood for "Radio for the Print Handicapped" and they began in Australia in 1975 on Melbourne's 3ZZ.
On 23 July 1978 the Minister for Post and Telecommunications announced: "The establishment of a special radio communications service for the blind and other people with reading difficulties."
The federal government began its direct funding of the service with a $250,000 grant in the 1981/82 budget.
Initially using marine band (today's extended AM broadcast band) frequencies, stations in Hobart, Melbourne and Sydney began operating. 7RPH Hobart went to air in June 1982. 3RPH Melbourne was officially opened in December the same year.
By 1984/85 RPH services were also operating in Brisbane and Canberra. After another review, the specialised stations of the service transferred to normal broadcast band frequencies in 1990 and 1991.
Material from the network is heard on a small number of non-network community stations in Australia and on the Radio Reading Service of New Zealand.
Famous quotes containing the words radio, print, handicapped and/or network:
“We spend all day broadcasting on the radio and TV telling people back home what’s happening here. And we learn what’s happening here by spending all day monitoring the radio and TV broadcasts from back home.”
—P.J. (Patrick Jake)
“And so on into winter
Till even I have ceased
To come as a foot printer,
And only some slight beast
So mousy or so foxy
Shall print there as my proxy.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“The living language is like a cowpath: it is the creation of the cows themselves, who, having created it, follow it or depart from it according to their whims or their needs. From daily use, the path undergoes change. A cow is under no obligation to stay in the narrow path she helped make, following the contour of the land, but she often profits by staying with it and she would be handicapped if she didn’t know where it was or where it led to.”
—E.B. (Elwyn Brooks)
“How have I been able to live so long outside Nature without identifying myself with it? Everything lives, moves, everything corresponds; the magnetic rays, emanating either from myself or from others, cross the limitless chain of created things unimpeded; it is a transparent network that covers the world, and its slender threads communicate themselves by degrees to the planets and stars. Captive now upon earth, I commune with the chorus of the stars who share in my joys and sorrows.”
—Gérard De Nerval (1808–1855)