Connecticut Unit

Location:
209 Orange Street
New Haven, CT 06510
Phone: 203-624-4334
Fax: 203-865-0203

Hours of Operation: Monday & Wednesday: 9:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m.
Tuesday: 7:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m.
Thursday: 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
Friday: 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.
Saturday: 7:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m.

Anne Fortunato Named Honorary Member of Delta Kappa Gamma Society International

Congratulations to Anne Fortunato, State Director of the Connecticut Unit of Recording for the Blind & Dyslexic, who has been inducted into the Alpha Kappa State Chapter as an honorary member of The Delta Kappa Gamma Society International, a worldwide organization of women who have made a significant impact in the field of education. Anne, along with fellow inductee State Senator Mary Ann Handley (D-Manchester), was honored at a November 4, 2006, ceremony in Rocky Hill, CT. The Delta Kappa Gamma Society International is an international honorary society with more than 150,000 key women educators in fourteen countries. The national organization has been a generous donor to RFB&D and our Adopt-A-Text Program.

The unit held an open house on Monday, March 21 in celebration of the full digitalization of RFB&D’S Connecticut Unit.
Download the Press Release
View photos from the event.

The Connecticut Unit's charter reads April 2, 1959. We are located within walking distance of Yale and there are many other universities in the area. Our new initiatives involve self-directed recording and home recording.

The Connecticut Unit was started in 1959 by a handful of volunteers who recorded textbooks onto shellac disks in 600 square feet of space donated by the New Haven Library. In the 1960s, the Connecticut Unit was selected by national headquarters for a special and prestigious project: recording the complete works of nine American authors. The definitive editions were approved by the Center for Editions of American Authors of the Modern Language Association. The authors were: Samuel Clemens, Stephen Crane, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, William Dean Howells, Washington Irving, Herman Melville, Henry David Thoreau and Walt Whitman. Connecticut was selected for this project because of its production quality, which national headquarters described as "outstanding - particularly in the recording of literature, the meticulousness of book preparation and the quality of reading."

Later, in the early 1980s, the Connecticut Unit was designated as a specialist in the production of science and technology books because of its high quality work in those areas. The Connecticut Unit:

• operates a studio with six soundproof booths and sophisticated recording and duplication equipment that produces RFB&D books
• uses over 160 volunteers and a small paid staff for both preparation of our books and overall management
• records books for over 750 Connecticut residents and thousands of people across the country
• records a wide variety of texts including science and technology books

Volunteer Information:
Due to a small staff, our studio has volunteers doing almost everything. Volunteers do the bookmarking, file checking, they send bills to HQ for paying, thank you letters to donors, grant writing and almost anything else. We need readers for all subjects. To learn more about volunteering opportunities, call or e-mail Leslie Wasserman.

Make A Difference by Making A Donation
To use our secure online server to donate to the Connecticut Unit, RFB&D headquarters, or a combination of both, see our Donate Now page.

Contact Information:
Call 203-624-4334 or send an e-mail to connecticut@rfbd.org.