Indiana Reading and Information Services (IRIS) has served the greater Indianapolis area with the daily news for over twenty-five years. For most, this service, which is provided by collaboration between WFYI and IHETS, does not exist. Amber Wortman, the Director of IRIS, says this is because the service is, “WFYI’s best kept secret. Most of the time, you don’t know about a product until you need it, until you try to find it.” Although IRIS is a free service, it is challenged with growing its listener-base because it is only for the reading-impaired. IRIS serves as a link between the news and its listeners, most of whom suffer from blindness, low vision, physical limitations, learning disorders or illiteracy, which means they are unable to read normal print. The publications read on a daily basis come in the form of newspapers, magazines, and a host of other materials to keep its listeners in the know about Indianapolis as a whole.
While the list of materials read by one of IRIS’ 400 volunteer readers is a long one, readers are on the air 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to fit in all of the readings. For the majority of its time on the air, IRIS had been catering to Indianapolis and the surrounding areas only due to a geographical cap of 45 miles around the downtown area. “If you can listen to 90.1 [National Public Radio], you should be able to hear IRIS, as IRIS is a sideband of 90.1.” So why doesn’t anyone scanning the radio hear it? It takes a specially tuned radio to hear IRIS, which is just one of the three ways to listen to the broadcast. Other participants in the IRIS program can utilize the Nina Mason Pulliam Statewide Dial-Up Service, which uses a phone number for on-demand listening. However, in the attempt to reach listeners in as many ways as possible and provide a more suitable solution for those listeners outside of the Indianapolis area, the IRIS Radio Broadcast Web Stream began transmission in April of 2006 with the help of IHETS.
IHETS is a company that is focused on technology, education, collaboration, and its impact in the state of Indiana. Beginning with a few state-funded higher education institutions, IHETS has grown to support companies and conglomerates across the great state of Indiana in their education and telecommunication needs. IHETS now works with WFYI to stream the IRIS daily recordings over the web to all registered users of IRIS, any time of day and anywhere in the US. Through this unique partnership, IRIS is able to acquire the necessary bandwidth needed to stream its audio services online, and in doing so, offer its listeners a portable alternative to the antiquated radio receiver.
As IHETS’ relationship grows into maturity with WFYI and IRIS, the mission of IRIS stands out more clearly: “Encourage and support the establishment and the ongoing improvement of services which provide access to printed information for individuals who cannot read print due to blindness or other visual, physical, or learning disability.” With the help of IHETS, Director Wortman had one final thought about the future in saying, “The future of IRIS is a portable, nationwide, online, and on-demand service of daily periodicals with room to grow.”