BACKGROUND: The mass media have the potential to motivate people to participate in self appraisal of their own health status. An innovative communication package was designed to help people to examine vision at home. The impact of publishing the "do it yourself" (DIY) kit in Indian newspapers was evaluated. METHODS: A pretested bilingual vision testing kit was published in three newspapers. The kit comprised four tumbling Es corresponding to 6/12 line of Snellen's optotypes. Directions on using the kit were enclosed. 3 -7 days after publication of the kit, a telephone survey of newspaper readers was undertaken to evaluate the impact and cost effectiveness. RESULTS: 603 people were contacted over the telephone. 125 (20.73%) subscribed to the newspaper carrying the DIY insertion. 43.2% (54) noticed the insertion of which 88.89% (48) read the enclosed instructions carefully. 58.33% respondents felt sufficiently motivated to contact an ophthalmologist. Graduates had a 3.83 times higher probability of reading the communication insertion compared with others. Differences in relation to other demographic variables were not statistically significant. CONCLUSIONS: Newspapers are an excellent medium for communicating self appraisal kits for vision testing. The medium is cost effective and has significant reach in the urban agglomerates of India.