What goes on through the doors of the Royal National Institute for the Blind (RNIB) in Orton Southgate? Jemma Walton found out, and you could too.

FROM the outside, it looks like any other largeish office on the edge of Peterborough. But once inside the RNIB building you quickly realise that it's a place that makes thousands of people happy every single day.

Because the RNIB, in Bakewell Road, Orton Southgate, is the place where RNIB's 70 or so braille magazines are printed and sent out, it is the place where audio book CDs are burned and sent out and it is the place where people with sight problems can order equipment that can change their lives.

This is not just any office. This is one of the most important offices in the city.

Although the charity's head office is in Judd Street in central London, the Peterborough base is key to its operations – it does, for example, house the biggest braille production facility in Europe.

Its work will be highlighted next month, when its doors will be thrown open so more of us can be taken on a tour of the building to learn more about the fascinating work they do and the key role the base plays in the lives of partially sighted and blind people.

Communcations assistant Zelie Vickers was kind enough to show me around the building.




"When people drive by here they probably think that it's just an office," said Zelie. "But it is so much more than that. The site takes up eight acres, and we have 400 staff here – 47 per cent of those are paid, 53 per cent are volunteers.

"When they drive by, they wouldn't know that we produce 13 million pages of braille every year, for example. But we want them to know. What we do here shouldn't be a mystery, and we are always happy to show anyone around."

One of the key parts of the building is the transcribing office. Everything from magazine articles through to foreign language textbooks or sheet music can be transcribed from the written alphabet into braille. Once transcribed it is then sent down to the printing floor to be printed and distributed.

The Radio Times, for example, is turned into braille from the Orton Southgate office each week. Banks and building societies also pay the charity to turn statements into braille.

And then there is the talking book production area. For £76 a year, someone with sight problems can have six talking books on loan at any one time, and can choose from a library of 14,500 books, from Patricia Cornwell through to Tolstoy or Margaret Thatcher's memoirs.

"Each book is burnt for the person who ordered it, and when they have finished with it they return it to us and it's recycled, said Zelie.

"This worked out as cheaper and more efficient than having one big library. The CDs, when recycled are made into plant pots or road surfacing, which is an interesting thought!

"We send £10,000 worth of books a day out from here. When you think of how much a lot of people enjoy reading a book, and how much their lives would have been affected by not being able to read anymore, I think what we offer here is a really fantastic service."

The customer service department for the charity is also based in Peterborough, with staff there taking a new call every 53 seconds.

Continues on next page, including 'How you can help the RNIB'