Audio Archives

The Audio Archives will one day be a searchable collection of recorded briefings and long reads. At this stage it does not exist: there are no recordings, no podcast feed and no live radio. This page says what is available now and what we hope to build.

What is available today

Every story page has a Listen button, and the Live Desk page offers a short briefing. These use the speech feature built into your browser, which reads the text aloud on your device. There is nothing to download and no audio file stored on our servers. Because the voice comes from your device, quality and available languages vary between phones and computers, and the pronunciation of names and technical terms is not always perfect.

How to use read-aloud

1. Open a story and press Listen near the top of the page.
2. Press the button again to pause or stop.
3. Start another Listen button and the first one stops automatically.

On some browsers, the voice stops if you lock the screen or switch apps. That is a browser behavior we cannot change from the website.

What an archive could include

• Recorded briefings from human hosts.
• Long reads narrated in full.
• Transcripts for every episode, so audio is never the only way in.
• A podcast feed you could follow in any player.

Accessibility commitments

Audio should extend access, not replace it. Any recorded content we publish will have a full transcript, and read-aloud will continue to work for stories without recordings. If a page or control is hard to use with a screen reader or keyboard, please tell us so that we can fix it.

What we are not claiming

We do not have a live radio stream, listener numbers, hosts or studio teams. Any audio widget on the site is the browser reading text, and it is labelled that way. If that changes, this page will be rewritten first.

Feedback

If you would use an audio archive, tell us what you would like to hear and how you would listen. Write to [email protected], a placeholder address for the launch edition.