Sydney’s 2RPH is no ordinary radio station and has been that way for 21 years.

2RPH provides a daily reading service for print handicapped people, boasting an audience of 150 000. Among them are migrants learning English, stroke victims who can’t hold a newspaper and adults who never learned to read.

Celebrating its 21st birthday, the station has a new Chairman, Ron McCallum, who is also Sydney University’s Law School Dean and Australia’s first vision impaired person to become a professor.

With typical humility, McCallum considers himself lucky. Blind from birth, he is well schooled in Braille and has internet access via a computer with a synthetic speech program.

“Most vision impaired people lose their sight late in life, when it’s too late for training and beyond their means to buy computer gadgetry.”

McCallum hopes to acquire a secondary transmitter to overcome poor reception pockets in Sydney’s east and north: “When you consider the difference 2RPH makes to people’s lives, run mostly volunteers on a very small budget, it’s a very worthwhile thing.”