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IN TOUCH – Rebuilding Ukraine; Tennis

TX:Ìý 05.07.2022Ìý 2040-2100

PRESENTER:Ìý ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý PETER WHITE

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PRODUCER:Ìý ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý BETH HEMMINGS

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White

Good evening.Ìý

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Audio tennis

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White

Well, that was tennis but not as we know it.Ìý But a preview of how visually impaired people might be able to get more out of Wimbledon’s of the future.Ìý And we’ll be talking to one of the UK’s most promising visually impaired tennis players later in the programme.

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But before all that, we return to the harsh realities of Ukraine.Ìý I’m sure you remember during the first few weeks of the country coming under Russian attack, we reported, here on In Touch, on attempts to help blind people who wanted to leave the country and the recognition that at some point rehabilitation services would have to be rebuilt, not least because of the increased numbers of visually impaired people inevitably created by war casualties.

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Marla

I fear that soon the war in Ukraine will disappear from headlines, people will forget about it but the problem will remain and people will need just as much help in few months as they are now or as ever a month ago.Ìý I just hope that there will be more significant help provided to those people in need, I really hope so.

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White

Well, that was Olga Marla, who had returned to the country of her birth to give what help she could.Ìý And we can now report on an initiative designed to help Ukrainians cope with the situation that Olga describes.Ìý Two British based charities – Blind Veterans UK and Bravo Victor – were invited to Ukraine and have signed an agreement with the government there to use these organisations’ wide experience to provide rehabilitation and research facilities to deal with the emergency.

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Nick Caplin, Chief Executive of Veterans UK and trustee of Bravo Victor, told me about the situation that they found there.

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Caplin

Trying to get accurate numbers of people who have been blinded, as a result of the war, is far from straightforward.Ìý That said, we did manage to have discussions with a number of ministers, including internal affairs, who look after the border guards and police, for example, we were given numbers from internal affairs which recorded the number of people who had been completely blinded and it reconfirmed, in our minds, that this is a significant issue.Ìý So, that was just for a small element of their security infrastructure.Ìý If you can put on top of that their defenders – their army and everybody who’s actually fighting the war – you’re up to another scale completely.Ìý So, whilst we don’t have accurate numbers at the moment, we’re doing work on that with Bravo Victor to try and get a better insight.

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White

So, what do you see as priorities because I believe the existing rehab facilities, themselves, have come under Russian attack?

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Caplin

Yes and this, Peter, goes back to the start of the war because it was on the Eastern front, in the main, to begin with and that’s where many of the casualties were being received and that’s where much of the treatment was set up to support them.Ìý So, they had rehabilitation facilities for the combatants, who’d been damaged in the east, but those now are no longer – those facilities are no longer functioning.Ìý Effectively, they don’t have a rehabilitation system in place, there are elements here and there but in the main they don’t.Ìý And as a good example of that, they had a centre for rehabilitation in a suburb called Borodianka, just to the north of Kyiv, which received just horrific damage from the invading forces a couple of months ago – damage to infrastructure and to people.Ìý So, that centre of rehabilitation, veterans’ rehabilitation, in Borodianka is just a wreck, it’s a shell today but it will be the focus for their rebirth, if you will, the start of their new rehabilitation capability or system going forward.Ìý So, the essence of the support that we will be providing, both in terms of rehabilitation and research, is to help Ukrainians help Ukrainians.Ìý So, it’s to build the Ukrainian capability, so they are best placed themselves, going forward.

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White

I understand you feel that help might be needed in convincing some of the people who’ve been blinded or have lost degrees of sight, that rehabilitation is actually possible.

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Caplin

Yes.Ìý As you know, Peter, rehabilitation is a journey, those people from Ukrainian forces who find themselves seriously disabled, seriously wonder about the value that they can add to life going forward and worry about them being a drain, rather than somebody who could actually support the rebirth of Ukraine.Ìý So, we heard more than once the idea that the disabled veteran would rather die, than live on as a disabled veteran through rehabilitation.Ìý And I think that’s understandable, we’ve recognised a little bit of that through our own experience within Blind Veterans but I think it demonstrates the work that we’ve got to do because we need to get alongside, help Ukrainians build this understanding and start the very important process of working with mindsets and beginning to open up the ideas of the opportunities going forward and how rich and fulfilling lives can be lived and how there will be every and any opportunity to support the rebuilding of Ukraine going forward.

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White

Including a perfectly reasonable range of jobs that people could do, although they’ve lost their sight.

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Caplin

Yes, absolutely, and you know this is an area where there has been quite a bit of focus in Ukraine and a lot of their support to the blind and partially sighted has been in the area of employment, overcoming barriers and opening up opportunities. ÌýI think they would be the first ones to say that although that’s been where much of their focus has been, there’s still quite a lot of work to do.Ìý And I really appreciated their sort of openness and honesty in that and their desire to work with professionals, work with others from countries such as ourselves in building – building their capability, building their awareness, education, developing their professions.Ìý And we got into this, also, with the – in the area of disability sport because they are very clear that disability sport is a very powerful way of helping rehabilitation journeys and opening up opportunities and they are very keen to work with us and others to develop knowledge, understanding and awareness of that also.

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White

Nick Caplin, thank you very much.Ìý And we’ll certainly stay in touch with Veterans UK to follow the work that they’re doing.

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Nick talked there about the rehabilitative value of sport which leads neatly on to the next item.Ìý Regular listeners will know by now that I’m a bit of a sports nut and at the moment, when I’m not following the latest Test Match – and what a win that was earlier today – I’m glued to Wimbledon on TV by listening like this:

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Clip – Wimbledon TV Audio

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Yes, I know there’s a radio commentary and I could listen to that, very good it is too, but it’s not too hard to follow tennis on TV by sound alone, once you know who’s serving.Ìý It’s more like being there as well.Ìý But it’s possible that I’ll be able to follow next year’s Wimbledon by listening to sounds accompanying the streamed event in real time, designed to give a visually impaired fan much more information about what’s actually going on in the match.Ìý It’s been featured at Australia’s Open and it’s also been tested here in Britain at a pre-Wimbledon tournament.

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Someone who’s been involved with almost every aspect of the Action Audio System, as it’s known, is Tim Devine.Ìý Tim is Executive Director of Innovation at digital design company AKQA.Ìý He joined me earlier this morning from New Zealand and he told me more about it, including a demonstration of how it works.

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Devine

Our job in creating Action Audio was to fill an information gap.Ìý So, we sort of had to deconstruct the idea or the essence of tennis and then fill in the gaps using abstract sounds that are kind of in counter point to maybe close captions or any other sort of verbalised or textual descriptions.Ìý So, when it’s hit and moves through the air, you can here it moving through the air and it’s a sound like this [bells].Ìý When a player hits a forehand, it sounds like this [bells].Ìý When they hit a backhand, it sounds like this [bells].Ìý And when it lands on the court, you’ll be able to hear how close it is to the line and that’ll sound like this, if it’s not very close to the line [bells], and like this if it’s very close to the line [bells].Ìý So, when we were designing the principles that we’ve created for Action Audio we wanted it to be listenable by anyone, that’s what sport is; the second principle was about making it familiar and many of you may be familiar with blind tennis and in blind tennis there’s a rattle in the ball, a rattle is a very good sound character for sound locating, so it works very well in 3D audio.

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White

Okay, so you have to learn these things before you can really make the best use of your system?

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Devine

Absolutely, yeah, but we can see a system in the near future and we’re developing a new system which will allow people to curate a little bit more the sounds that they’re interested in and to maybe expand, also, I guess in that sense, the vocabulary of the sounds aligned to what’s happening in the game.

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White

So, in the simplest terms, what does a visually impaired listener need in the way of equipment to be able to access this?

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Devine

For the last – we’ve done it for two Australian Opens and we’ve just done at the Queen’s Club tournament before Wimbledon this year, they were radio streams, so we streamed them online.Ìý We also had a Google Action, so you could listen to it easily or kind of call it up on your smart home devices.Ìý The basics would be streaming online.Ìý What our intention is for the next tournaments, so whether that’s the US Open or the Australian Open next year, is to have it as part of, what’s called, an OTT broadcast, which would be audio and video streaming in sync.Ìý We know that from our testing, people watch tennis, irrespective of their visual impairment, so they’ll take what they can out of it and also by adding the Action Audio sounds to it we can create a more augmented experience for them.Ìý So, that the goal would be, in the future, for it to be part of a visual experience as well.Ìý

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We’re really excited to launch at the Australian Open next year a pilot to do it live in stadium, so that people can have the Action Audio experience at the stadium, while the tennis is happening there in front of them.

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White

Sounds like you’re quite a long way ahead with this, why not Wimbledon?Ìý Now you did this tournament here at Queen’s Club, as you said, but why not the big one?

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Devine

Yeah, it’s a good question.Ìý So, at the moment, the service is really reliant on partnerships and I think we worked closely with the LTA this year and we worked with the RNIB and British Blind Sports, as well, to realise that this year at the Queen’s Club championships.Ìý And I think it’s about having the relationship, I suppose.Ìý And I think it’s slowly, slowly but surely, as we got so much great feedback from this last week or the week before at Queen’s Club it’s essential that it becomes something that is consistent in a service across all tennis events and then into other sports.

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White

So, Wimbledon next year?

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Devine

I hope so, yeah.

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White

And what could its application be to other sports – cricket, my love; soccer, rugby?

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Devine

Absolutely, yeah, as I said, I think the easiest way to think about it is it fills an information gap, it fills a gap where you may not get the information that you might want to be getting, whether it be through commentary or the audio of the game itself.Ìý And I think a good thing to think about what Action Audio’s intention is, it’s about allowing people to make their own appraisals of what’s happening, so just rather than having a commentator, and I’m a massive fan of cricket and cricket has a great history of colourful, wonderful commentary, the idea is to give people their own agency to make up their own mind and that can complement commentary as well.Ìý So, yeah, the intention is to go cricket and football and all sports really.

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White

That was Tim Devine, one of the designers of Action Audio.

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Well, one tennis enthusiast who probably wouldn’t need all those whistles and bells to enjoy the tennis, but who has been listening to it, is Ivan Rodriguez-Deb.Ìý Now you heard Tim mentioning blind tennis there but Ivan has enough sight to play the VI version of the game and indeed play it very well.Ìý Although only 16 he’s Britain’s number one men’s player in his sight category B4.

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Ivan, first of all, what did you make of that?Ìý It’s not quite the real thing, is it?

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Rodriguez-Deb

No but it sounded like an amazing system.Ìý It would be great to see how visually impaired and blind tennis players use this system, not just to watch the match in sort of its fuller form but also to analyse matches, so that they can implement maybe certain tactics into their own playing.

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White

Well, we’ll see – we’ll see if it actually arrives here at Wimbledon next year.Ìý Let’s come back to you.Ìý Sixteen – pretty young age to be national men’s champion in your category.Ìý What’s the next step – world champion?

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Rodriguez-Deb

Definitely, I’d love to bring back gold for GB.Ìý But also, on lots of other parameters, I’d love for it to have that kind of exposure to larger events like Wimbledon, which we’ve seen in other sort of disability sports like wheelchair and I’d love to see the sport to continue to grow because the more people that know about it, the more momentum will be gained in that sense.Ìý For that to happen integration and sort of local club level needs to be done.

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White

Well, let’s try and help a bit with that.Ìý Tell us a bit more about playing tennis with your degree of sight.Ìý I mean what adaptations have you had to make because, presumably, the kind of tennis you play is, in essence, very like the tennis that’s being played at Wimbledon?

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Rodriguez-Deb

Yes, I mean it’s very similar in lots of ways.Ìý The court size is quite similar, although the baseline is slightly shorter.Ìý And then the way it’s played, the point system, serving, that’s all exactly the same.Ìý The only thing that is slightly different would be the ball, which would be a sponge ball with a bell inside it, obviously, to help track that ball.Ìý So, that helps people track the ball because it’s slower and also you can hear its progress in the air.

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White

Because you did start to play, what I might call, mainstream tennis, I mean how tricky was that, what were the difficulties that made you think – I’m going to need to go to this kind of VI category of tennis?

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Rodriguez-Deb

Yes, I did start playing mainstream tennis when I was eight and gradually, I just found that was harder to keep up with not only the speed of the ball but different spins.Ìý And that’s when I started trying to look for other sports – disability sports that I might be able to play in and that’s how I found out about VI tennis.

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White

And I think you’ve had quite a lot of family backing, haven’t you?

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Rodriguez-Deb

Yes, I have, it’s definitely been a family effort because fortunately, again, with the sort of lack of exposure not a lot of people know that these sports actually even exist, so they won’t look for them.Ìý So, at the beginning, I started training with my brother, he was my first coach really, and then eventually I managed to find a qualified coach.Ìý So, yeah, it’s been an interesting journey.

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White

So, what’s the next big event?Ìý I mean you mentioned bringing back gold medals, so this is presumably a Paralympic event?

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Rodriguez-Deb

No, actually, unfortunately, for the B4 category tennis is not hosted as a Paralympic event which is really frustrating actually.Ìý But the next…

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White

Right, so are you pushing for that then, is that another thing you’re campaigning for?

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Rodriguez-Deb

Yes, definitely, that’s one of our aims, to get that included because it obviously is a very relevant category and I think people would enjoy playing and watching it.Ìý So, the next sort of big tournament would be – there’s an international tournament in Gdansk, so that would be my next aim.

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White

Right.Ìý But you weren’t joking about world champion and gold medals, that’s your aim?

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Rodriguez-Deb

Definitely, yeah, that’s the big aim.

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White

Also, I mean, you are quite an all-rounder aren’t you, it’s not all sport in your case, I believe you’re an accomplished musician as well?

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Rodriguez-Deb

Well, I do dedicate quite a lot of time to music, yes, I love music and I also do a lot of studying, especially, you know, at this time in my life.

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White

Ivan Rodriguez-Deb, thank you very much indeed.

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And that’s it for today, do let us hear your views and comments about anything you’ve heard.Ìý You can email intouch@bbc.co.uk.Ìý Leave voice messages on 0161 8361338.Ìý And you can always go to our website for more information and to download tonight’s and previous editions of the programme, that’s bbc.co.uk/intouch.Ìý From me, Peter White, producer Beth Hemmings and studio manager Jonathan Esp, goodbye.

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