Virginia Voice is a nonprofit radio reading service for the blind in the U.S. state of Virginia. It is carried via subcarrier on Virginia Public Media radio stations and WHRO-FM. A narrator reads newspapers, magazines, scholarly journals and articles from online news sources. Virginia Voice is also available on smart speakers via Alexa.

The origins of Virginia Voice trace to 1976, when Roy Ward, then Deputy Commissioner of the Virginia Commission for the Blind (a predecessor agency to the Virginia Department for the Blind and Vision Impaired), learned of emerging "audio reading services" operating in Minnesota and in Washington, D.C., where the Metropolitan Washington Ear had recently launched. Ward formed a community group consisting of Lions Club and Kiwanis Club members, who committed to fund the purchase of specialized sub-carrier radio receivers needed to pick up the broadcasts. Ward and his collaborators secured additional seed funding from multiple sources and formed the organization's first board of directors, with Ward as its inaugural chairman.^[1][2]

The new organization, then called Virginia Voice for the Print Handicapped, held its first board meeting in 1978.^[3][4] Programming in these early years was modest, centered on a two-hour morning reading of the Richmond Times-Dispatch and a two-hour reading of the Richmond News-Leader, produced from a small studio at the Rehabilitation Center on the Commission for the Blind's campus using little more than two microphones and a table.^[1][4]

Virginia Voice now broadcasts around the clock, every day of the year, drawing on roughly 150 volunteer readers who work through some 200 publications to produce about 100 programs weekly. The organization's annual budget has grown to approximately $450,000. Virginia Voice is now broadcast from 4pm to 10am Eastern each weekday.^[5][6] The Virginia Voice reads the Richmond Times-Dispatch at 8am and 4pm each weekday and provides many other programs such as readings of the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, and Washington Post.^[7]

The service now reaches an estimated 11,000 listeners in central Virginia via dedicated in-home radios,^[8] with additional reach across the Commonwealth through streaming to senior living communities, healthcare facilities, and other regional radio reading services.^[1][2]

In 2017, the organization introduced Live Audio Description services to improve access to the arts for people with vision impairment. The success of that pilot program helped Virginia Voice roughly double its partnerships with theaters, museums, sports venues, and other cultural institutions.^[1]

The organization is funded through annual state general fund allocations from the Virginia General Assembly, endowment distributions, private contributions, and the United Way.^[9][10]

• Virginia Voice website

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