ONCE has presented this Saturday, June 15, at the Madrid Book Fair, the audiobook ‘With a woman’s voice’, based on its latest work ‘Letters that never arrived’ (2023), and constructed through the recording of short stories of everyday stories that anyone can identify with.
The project, born and executed at ONCE Castilla y León, has been adapted for reading by people with visual disabilities. It includes around thirty women’s voices, such as that of the president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Diaz Ayuso; the Minister of Equality, Ana Redondo; that of the Australian ambassador, Sophia McIntyre; the model Ines Sastre; the businesswomen Sandra Ibarra or Lourdes Gullón; the singer Rozalén; the actresses Julieta Serrano or Helen Pimenta, or the journalists Gloria Lomana and Marta Roblesamong other.
‘With a woman’s voice’ is the second audiobook published by this author, after the launch in 2022 of ‘I give you my voice’, published in this audio format also in collaboration with the ONCE of Castilla y León and extracted from his two works from previous stories ‘I want you to read this’ (2020) and ‘Maybe your name is that’ (2021). In that first project, Delgado compiled the voices of actor Ramón Langa; the singer of Celtas Cortos, Jesús Cifuentes; the athlete and Olympic high jump champion, Ruth Beitia; the founder and president of the NGO Messengers of Peace, Father Ángel; or journalists like Berta Tapia, Carlos Flores and Juan Ramón Lucas, among others.
The author Guillermo Delgado (Valladolid, 1963) has also collaborated on the scripts of the short films directed by Iván Sáiz-Parso ‘Tono Menor’ (2019) and ‘Espinas’ (2021). He is a Tourism technician and works in Corporate Development, in the Vallisoletana Confederation of Entrepreneurs.
Reading available to everyone
The audiobook is one of the most used formats by blind and visually impaired people to be able to access reading and information. For this reason, ONCE makes a wide catalog of titles available to all affiliated blind people, through its Digital Library (BDO), for downloading and subsequent reading.
In 2023, blind people affiliated with ONCE carried out 448,241 downloads of its Digital Library, which already exceeds 80,000 works, which can be accessed through a PC, mobile app or Alexa.
The ONCE Bibliographic Service (SBO) adapts all the texts that blind people need in their daily lives to braille, relief and audio. Going from books to notes for students, exams, assessment tests, articles, etc. All of this, with the objective of promoting reading and culture among blind and visually impaired people in Spain and also in the rest of the world, who can also access under the Marrakesh Treaty to more than 500 works.
