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New Ways to Volunteer

Categories: Volunteerism

We're excited to share details on two new volunteer "jobs" that can be done from the comfort of your own home, office, or virtually anywhere there is internet connection: the image description program and home recording. For our valued volunteers who are not able to come into a studio, we hope you will find these new opportunities both inviting and stimulating. Image Description Program For decades, Learning Ally audiobooks have included descriptions of images, a essential part of providing full access to learning materials for our members.  Today there is a great need for volunteers to describe a backlog of images to complete the books our members are waiting for. We now have a new and more efficient way to complete this process with our image description program. This volunteer job is critical and can be done anytime and anywhere you have a computer with internet access. After volunteers go through a short training session, the steps are simple:
  • Log onto the internet on your computer.
  • Go to our image description website.
  • Type a description of the picture you are shown.
These descriptions are then saved, to be either recorded in audio format or, in some cases, converted to synthetic speech, and inserted into our audiobooks. For a more detailed look at the image description program, watch the  instructional video below.
At-Home Recording Throughout the past decade, a number of Learning Ally volunteers have participated in home recording of our classic audiobooks. With the demand for VoiceText books higher than ever, we're excited that advances in technology will soon allow us to open this opportunity to all of our volunteers to record these books. We're now in the initial phases of launching an at-home recording program and are testing user hardware with a select group of volunteers. We'll be adding volunteers to the program in incremental steps over the coming weeks and months, with a goal of having at least 100 in-training and active at-home readers by June 30th. If you would like to find out more information or want to sign up for either of these opportunities, please contact Deirdre Ryan at volunteer@learningally.org.