Website to encourage reading
Ross Watson
Thursday, November 6, 2008
The Reading Agency plans to launch a website next year to encourage young people to read.
The site, www.groupthing.org, is aimed at 13- to 18-year-olds. The Reading Agency charity hopes they will access it through libraries, youth groups and schools who will pay an annual subscription rate.
Young people who use the site will have access to authors, illustrators, publishers and games designers who will write blogs and answer questions. The Royal National Institute of the Blind RNIB helped to design the site to make it accessible to blind and partially sighted young people. A group of young people was also closely involved in putting the site together.
Miranda McKearney, director of The Reading Agency, said: "An engagement with reading and writing is crucial to young people's life chances. Because they spend up to 20 hours a week online we need to reach out to them on their own terms."
The site will launch next January, although early subscribers can get access before then.
www.thereadingagency.org.uk
