Clear Creek County recently partnered with the Audio Information Network of Colorado (AINC) to provide news to residents who might face barriers accessing traditional print mediums.
AINC is a nonprofit dedicated to creating audio versions of print papers and magazines to make them accessible to blind, visually impaired and print-disabled people.
Clear Creek County Public Information Officer Megan Hiler saw the opportunity for the county to get involved when she first started the job.
“I started here as the public information officer in May of last year. And ever since then, I've been trying to just find new ways to be able to reach every single person in the county,” Hiler explained.
When she saw a flier for AINC, she knew this could be an important way to reach people in the county and inquired about it for Clear Creek.
AINC is largely volunteer-based and had some trouble finding someone local to curate a podcast for Clear Creek every week. That’s when Hiler and her partner decided to step in.
“So I said, 'Hey, I would be willing to do this. I know a lot about what's going on in the county if you need somebody,'” Hiler said. “And I actually had mentioned it to my boyfriend who works for CBS Colorado, and he said he would be interested too, so now we kind of split it.”
The two trade off recording the podcast every other weekend.
AINC has a statewide reach, recording popular print publications like the Denver Post and the New York Times. Alexandra Flynn is the senior programming manager for AINC. She explained more about the impact of the service.
“We have around 1,500 to 2,000 registered listeners, however, we've noticed that registering has really become a barrier. So we don't require registration anymore,” Flynn explained. “But our downloads that we can track online, we're tracking about 250,000 downloads per year, I think that that definitely shows the need for this kind of service.”
This service is different, and many say preferable, to a computerized screen reader, for multiple reasons according to Flynn. She said the personal aspect of a human voice speaking is huge, but another piece is the true accessibility.
“On the other side of that, the vast majority of the internet is not actually accessible to screen readers,” Flynn said.
The ADA requires accessibility on web content that applies to state and local government, as well as businesses open to the public. Still, a 2022 study found that only 3% of the internet is actually accessible to people with disabilities.
Hiler recently chatted with John Thomas, a resident of unincorporated Clear Creek without regular internet access. AINC can be valuable to people without internet access too, because it can be listened to via landline.
“He lives in a place where the newspaper is not delivered. He doesn't watch TV, he doesn't have a radio signal,” she said.
Thomas has been living in Clear Creek County for nearly 40 years, and frankly, he prefers to live in a place without all the modern amenities.
“I have an antenna that I get garbage TV–that’s putting it really nice —I don’t watch a lot of that,” he said.
Thomas hits the Evergreen library every week to check out books and do any downloading that his dial-up computer service can’t handle. With the new weekly service from AINC, he’ll have an on-demand source for news.
After listening to the first episode, he said he would be tuning in for more.
“I put it on a sticky note, and it's sticking on my monitor on my computer,” he said.
Clear Creek County News is a podcast made up of news from multiple sources around the county and state, including the Clear Creek Courant.
There are multiple ways to listen to the weekly AINC podcast for Clear Creek County. Listeners can check out the Clear Creek or AINC websites for the latest episodes, listen on major podcast platforms, or can call 303-786-7777 Press 2, 1, 30.
To hear it live, Clear Creek County News airs on the northern Colorado Stream at 2:30 p.m. Sunday, 10 p.m. Monday and 2:30 a.m. Wednesday. To listen to a live stream over the phone, call 303-786-7777 Press 3, 1.
