RAN­DALL SUMAIRS­INGH

It's amaz­ing how the vi­su­al­ly im­paired man­age to ac­com­plish their feats. Though they can­not see, most blind peo­ple have oth­er over-com­pen­sat­ing sens­es, and usu­al­ly an over-zeal­ous as­pi­ra­tion for suc­cess.

But still, how are they able to run an In­ter­net ra­dio sta­tion? Caribbean Cul­ture Vibes (CCV) streams live mu­sic on­line. Run sole­ly by a group of blind cit­i­zens, the sta­tion al­ready has a few hun­dred lis­ten­ers and is grow­ing swift­ly. Put to­geth­er by a few mu­sic lovers who sim­ply need­ed some­thing to do with their time, CCV ra­dio is tru­ly a mar­vel. Pro­gramme di­rec­tor and one of the DJs for CCVra­dio.com, Mar­lon "DJ Alex" Alexan­der ex­plained to the T&T Guardian how they man­age to air their In­ter­net ra­dio casts.

How is it done?

Soft­ware is a huge part of their ra­dio sta­tion. They have no use for a mouse, which is used for vi­su­al in­ter­face. Us­ing on­ly a key­board and some help­ful pro­grams like JAWS (Job Ac­cess With Speech), these "chal­lenged" peo­ple don't seem chal­lenged at all. The JAWS pro­gram ac­tu­al­ly sim­u­lates speech. They use it to do ad­ver­tise­ments and an­nounce­ments dur­ing their casts. JAWS is on­ly one of the lib­er­at­ing soft­ware pro­grams that brings light to the dark world of a blind per­son. On CCV ra­dio they al­so use pro­grams such as Sta­tion Playlist and Sam In­coders. Since it is an on­line sta­tion, none of the 11 mem­bers are ever in the same room when broad­cast­ing. How then do they com­mu­ni­cate mu­sic and DJ sched­ules? They use Skype, a free au­dio and video-call­ing, so­cial net­work. So, in the pri­va­cy of their homes, in front of their PCs, these peo­ple are at their own per­son­al com­mand cen­tre.

Plans for the fu­ture

Caribbean Cul­ture Vibes is a pa­tri­ot­ic sta­tion, and plays on­ly Caribbean mu­sic 24 hours a day, sev­en days a week. The ro­ta­tion in­cludes so­ca, ca­lyp­so, reg­gae and mu­sic that is pro­duced in the Caribbean or by peo­ple from the is­lands. DJ Alex said the sta­tion would soon be ex­tend­ing to in­clude oth­er hand­i­capped in­di­vid­u­als.

Who funds it?

Com­pris­ing of just vol­un­teers, fund­ing is dif­fi­cult for the non-prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tion. Alexan­der said CCV ra­dio is open to do­na­tions to keep the Caribbean mu­sic flow­ing. He said pay­ing for their serv­er, equip­ment and soft­ware came out of their own pock­ets, adding that on­ly a few of the mem­bers were em­ployed else­where. Any­one in­ter­est­ed in help­ing to keep the Caribbean Cul­ture Vibes flow­ing can vis­it the web page ccvra­dio.com and click on the do­na­tion link.