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IN TOUCH – A Very Merry (In Touch) Christmas

TX:Ìý 20.12.2022Ìý 2040-2100

PRESENTER:Ìý ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý PETER WHITE

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PRODUCER:Ìý ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý BETH HEMMINGS

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White

Good evening.Ìý Christmas is a time to be jolly and we’ve got plenty of jollity lined up for you tonight, including, the very latest news on the accessibility to visually impaired people of video games.Ìý We’ll be dropping in with some very small In Touch listeners on a Santa’s grotto designed just for them and we welcome, as our studio guest, an entertainer whose popularity is going not up the chimney but through the roof.

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But just before all that, one bit of serious business which needs clearing up.Ìý A couple of weeks ago Smart Energy GB told listeners that an accessible smart meter should be available from your energy supplier but a number of you, including Gary Ankin and Liz Silver, have been telling us that this is proving overoptimistic.Ìý They, and other listeners, have been in touch with British Gas, EDF, Octopus, none of whom could tell them that they’re in a position to supply this equipment at the moment and some of whom said they hadn’t even heard of it.Ìý Smart Energy GB’s own website is saying that the equipment is not yet available with every supplier.

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Well, we asked Ofgem, the energy regulator, about the position, they say suppliers are required to offer an accessible in-home display to customers who need it.Ìý They expect suppliers to have adequate stocks of accessible displays which they, Ofgem, are monitoring.Ìý We’ll be doing the same.

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And now, welcome to tonight’s special guest – Chris McCausland.

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McCausland

Hello Peter, how are you doing?

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White

I’m good.Ìý Chris, bit of a Christmas surprise for you first of all because I have here the first time we spoke to you In Touch – Edinburgh Festival 2007 – and I asked you, with startling originality, how you got started.

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In Touch Archive

McCausland

It was just a dare.Ìý I dared meself.Ìý I came across one of them things, it said, it was like a crazy American thing, you be a stand-up comedian in 40 days.Ìý And I was just sitting there and thought well, if I have a go, just as long as I’m not the worst person ever to try it.Ìý Me first few gigs were very nice and I’ve had some gigs since where if that had have been me first one I wouldn’t have done anymore, so…

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McCausland

What are you doing to me Peter? [Laughter] I sound so full of life and youth.

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White

I’m guessing what you said there about gigs – tricky ones – I bet you don’t get too many of those now, surely.Ìý I mean things have really taken off for you, a bit of a regular on loads of real prestige radio and TV programmes, Royal Variety performance and you’re now on a major tour.Ìý Back when I interviewed you, could you have imagined all this happening?

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McCausland

Well, first of all, Peter, I remember that gig at the Edinburgh Fringe, as part of the free festival.Ìý There was about 12 people there and you could hear a pin drop.Ìý So, I mean, I’ve been in stand-up 20 years now, I think it’s one of them things that you can refer to, you know, within the public’s mind as a 20 year overnight success in a way because a lot of it’s come in the last two or three years.Ìý I’m on Radio 4 quite a lot these days and I did a pilot for a radio show called You Heard it Here First and it was about deciphering audio with the visuals removed perfectly and purposely created for the radio and that got commissioned, so we’re recording a series of that.

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White

So, there’s going to be even more of you on?

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McCausland

So, even more of me, saturated.Ìý But, no, it’s been just a real journey really and a real joy and getting to do things like the Royal Variety, as you said, last Christmas.Ìý When you’ve been doing stand-up this long, there’s not a lot about stand-up that terrifies you, it tends to be the things that put me outside me comfort zone and the Royal Variety was one of those things.Ìý I was on after these German fellas that balanced on each other’s heads, there was four of them, one of them lifted the other three up – I couldn’t see what they were doing on the stage, all I could hear was 5,000 people at the Royal Albert Hall screaming and losing their minds.Ìý I was – how do I just walk on after this and go ‘hello’?Ìý

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White

Chris, you’re on tour, as we speak.Ìý To quote another Chris are you going to be driving home for Christmas?

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McCausland

I’ve got the time off over Christmas and then we get back on the road kind of the second half of January really to get the rest of the year and dates done and finish, believe it or not, in the Shepherd’s Bush Empire.Ìý To perform at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire is going to be astonishing really, as long as, unlike 2007 Edinburgh Festival, there’s more than 12 people there.

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White

Well, delighted you’re going to get Christmas off.Ìý Stay with us, we want to just come back to you in a couple of minutes time.

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Now, as the demand for everything to be accessible for us grows, we wondered if Santa’s grotto was managing to keep up, which is when we discovered that the organisation Guide Dogs, along with entertainment production company The Ministry of Fun, have combined to build an inclusive grotto, even going so far as to provide Santa, himself, with some visual awareness training.

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Well, our resident child at heart, Fern Lulham, didn’t need asking twice to go along.

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Lulham

Right, what happens in here?

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Holly

I’m Holly, the head elf, and this is my workshop.Ìý I take everyone on a magical journey.

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Actuality

Right, my friends the lights are dimming and we’re going on our adventure and our adventure begins.Ìý On a boat.Ìý Can you hear that?Ìý Does that sound like the sea?

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Holly

And I’ve got these wooden boxes, they’re all scented, so different parts of the story you can get involved with a different smell just to help you sort of be more sensory and get into the story a bit more.

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Actuality

Can you smell?Ìý

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Holly

We’ve learnt so many useful things from here that we could certainly take to other Christmas spaces that look very beautiful but haven’t thought about texture or smell or sound.

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Actuality

I’ve got some scented pencils.

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Thank you.

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You’re so very welcome, thank you for visiting me on my workshop and keeping me company today.

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Lulham

As these two seemed like enthusiastic Santa’s little helpers and that treacherous journey had left us all feeling pretty peckish, I decided to stick with Raywin and Cailin as they headed to the cookie decorating station.

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Actuality

What are you going to put on your one?

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I’m going to put white icing.

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A white snowman, that’s probably better really, I don’t know what’s happened to my green one.

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One red eye, two red eyes, yummy.

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We do have tissues that we can wrap them up in and so you can take them home.

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I don’t want to take mine home.

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What’s this little guy’s name?

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This is River, yeah, he’s been enjoying all the attention today, as always.

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Of course.

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Lulham

That’s River’s sidekick, Alex Pepper, Guide Dogs Head of Accessibility.Ìý Alex chatted to me about what had inspired the day for him.

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Pepper

I’ve been visually impaired my whole life actually.Ìý When I think of grottos and going to town and the Christmas lights locally, it’s quite anxiety provoking – busy environments, dark environments, not knowing if the toy or the gift I’m going to get from Santa is going to be something I can actually use because of my vision.Ìý So, whilst I got to enjoy some aspects of Christmas, I don’t think I really ever got to enjoy it as much as my peers who were sighted.

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The grotto was designed very much with lived experience at the heart of it, understanding what the barriers are, what would overcome them, I suppose.Ìý What we hope is that it won’t just be a Guide Dogs thing, it will be a everyone at Christmas thing.Ìý The main message is it’s not an awful lot to do to make the world different and really it’s the environment that actually disables these children, it’s not necessarily their impairment.

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Lulham

Feeling a little chilly from all that excitable multi-coloured snowman action earlier, I thought I’d warm up with a hot chocolate and found Axa and her family doing the same.

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Axa

I’m going to have milk chocolate with whipped cream.

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Lulham

You can’t see very well, Axa, is that right?

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Axa

Yeah.

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Lulham

Does that change anything at Christmas for you?

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Axa

I’m not really good at putting tinsel up on the trees but I can hang baubles.

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Lulham

Is it alright if I talk to one of your auntie’s, if they don’t mind?Ìý What were you hoping that Axa would get out of today?

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Axa’s auntie

Christmas is one of her favourite holidays but obviously quite a lot of the stuff is visual, so this was really an opportunity to try and get full of Christmas experience, with different senses, which she doesn’t normally tend to get.

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Actuality

There’s whipped cream at the top, can you give that a little lick, if you want.Ìý

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Mmm, I like it.

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Lulham

And then all of a sudden the time had come to meet the man himself and I didn’t even attempt to hide my excitement.

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Actuality

Hello!Ìý Amazing to meet you.

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Fern, you too, yes.

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This is Nancy, her guide dog.

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My guide reigndog.

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That’s the spirit.

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Lulham

And how long have you had the job of Santa Claus?

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Santa

Well, that’s a question with an impossible answer – 400 and, no just a minute, it must be about 530… I’m so old I can’t remember how old I am.

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Lulham

Gosh.

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Santa

Today has been a rather wonderful and unique experience for us all because Christmas is a very sensory experience, it’s not all about sight, certainly the Christmas grotto experience can be more about you come in and you see Santa and then you have your present and off you go and we wanted to see if we could widen it out, bring them all into the fun.Ìý

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Actuality

Who’s bringing gifts on this special night?Ìý Let’s find out.Ìý We’ll open the biggest picture of all.Ìý I think I have a suspicion it might be me.

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Santa.

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It is.

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No way.

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Father Christmas, it was me along.

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Santa

We did a lot of training about taste and smell and feel and it just helped us to think in a slightly different way.Ìý Imaginations can show us different images in our minds.

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Actuality

Well, look that’s the end of our story but it ended rather nicely, didn’t it, with Father Christmas arriving and giving presents.Ìý Now I happen to have a very big bag full of presents right here.Ìý There’s one and there’s the other.Ìý Two little presents.

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Santa

It’s important to include all of those different senses and I think all children will respond to that.

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Actuality

Have a wonderful time.Ìý Thank you so much for coming to see me.

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Thank you so much.

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Lulham

And finally, Santa, I have to ask, what is your message to all the In Touch listeners this Christmas?

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Santa

Well, it’s simply that Christmas is for everyone and that I have a strong feeling that it’s going to be a good Christmas this year and that comes directly from the big man himself.

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Lulham

Amazing.Ìý Happy Christmas Santa.

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Santa

A happy Christmas to you.

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White

Fern Lulham there, mightily enjoying herself.

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So, Chris – Chris McCausland – when you go home for Christmas do you do all the business, you know, the dressing up as Santa, delivering a sack of toys at dead of night – do you do any of that stuff?

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McCausland

Well, me daughter’s nine years old, she’s big into it.Ìý Do you know what we did?Ìý We didn’t have anywhere to put the stocking, I ended up getting an Ikea wall bracket and hanging the – on Christmas Eve last year – hanging the stocking off the end of the table on an Ikea wall bracket with some oven trays holding it up, I mean there’s got to be some kind of risk assessment, health and safety issues there but we get stuck into all of that.

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White

I’m glad you’ve had your Santa experience.Ìý We used to have Christmases with some blind friends of mine and me and my mate, Mike, after a traditional Christmas Eve in the pub, took our sacks round and we set off from opposite directions and there was this huge collision of two blind people with two sacks of Christmas stuff on the floor, the kids all laughing at us.

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McCausland

Well, as long as the presents were labelled, so everybody – everybody knew whose they were.

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White

I’m sure they were.

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Chris, I know you’re into gadgets and one of the first things you did for us was about dear old Alexa or the precursors…

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McCausland

Yeah, yeah, you can’t say that out aloud, because people’s houses gone mad.

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White

Are you into games though, computer games, things like God of War for example, are you into that stuff?

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McCausland

No, I mean, is that even accessible?

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White

Well, ah, they can be accessible and we have our own video games enthusiast on the team.Ìý Producer, Beth Hemmings, commissioned herself to look into this for us.

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Hemmings

Yes, I love a good video game and this time of year is just perfect for playing them but it’s safe to say that access to a lot of the big blockbuster console games or the triple As, as they’re referred to, has always been quite the challenge, if you have some form of visual impairment.Ìý The gaming industry has woken up to this fact and is, thankfully, slowly changing but that’s something we’ll have to come to at a later date.Ìý Now, I’m not currently playing this game with the accessibility features turned on because, although I am partially sighted, if I sit close enough to the screen, I can make out what’s going on.Ìý So, I’ve enlisted some expert help to figure out what big video games blind and partially sighted people should be putting on their Christmas lists this year.

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Yes, get him, get him.

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Cole

Hi, I’m Brandon Cole, I am a professional accessibility consultant in the video game industry, won an award for it here and there and I work with Triple A Studios to make their games more accessible to the totally blind.

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Hemmings

Well, that’s credentials out of the way.Ìý So, Brandon, the big question is what games should or maybe the real question is what games could visually impaired people play?

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Cole

Well, there are not a whole lot of accessible games for the visually impaired, in terms of the big Triple A games, but one of the biggest ones to come out this year is God of War Ragnarök.

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Actuality – God of War Ragnarök

You don’t care about anything beyond yourself.

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Kratos covered in blood.

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You’re the monster who kills without cause.

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He runs with a wounded figure on his back through explosions and falling trees.Ìý He rescues Atreus from drowning.

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Fate only binds you if you let it.

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Cole

Believe it or not this massive wonderful Open World game is actually accessible to us.Ìý Ragnarök is coming essentially is the briefest synopsis I can give you, Ragnarök is coming and Kratos, the god of war, and his son Atreus have to venture through this world, finding out if they can stop the world from ending.Ìý I not only have played this game, I’ve finished this game and I think that’s an important note to make here because I do a lot of reviews for games that I can’t finish because they’re just not accessible enough.Ìý It’s not perfect, I think it's important to note that it’s not perfect, and the developers are constantly working to fix what currently is there.Ìý One of the biggest problems we have right now is that you can click on the map, you can get to it but the map is not narrated to us at all, so we can’t highlight anything that is on the map and make a way point to it that way but there are workarounds for that.

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Hemmings

Well, let’s hear a little bit of what those in-game accessibility features sound like.

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Actuality

Press the left side of the touchpad button to jump to the map.Ìý The side panel displays ongoing quest progress.

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Come a boat cannot be far.

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Hemmings

So, Brandon, can you explain a little bit about what that phroo phroo sound is helping you with?

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Cole

Yes, absolutely, that is probably the biggest and best feature of the game that allows us to play it and that is the navigational assistance.Ìý It turns the camera towards our objective, meaning as long as we keep pressing that button every few steps or so we will make it to our next objective and continue the story.Ìý It makes the game for us.

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Hemmings

Well, that’s God of War Ragnarök.Ìý Now, we couldn’t possibly talk about video games without talking about The Last of Us Part 2 could we?Ìý It’s an action-adventure game set in a post-apocalyptic world, it’s the first game that I ever played and the story is just phenomenal.Ìý It came out in 2020 and it’s been heralded as the most accessible Triple A game for blind and partially sighted people.Ìý So, Brandon, you actually worked on that game – Part 2 – so tell me about that experience.

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Cole

That is my crowning achievement.Ìý When I say that I’m an award-winning accessibility consultant, that’s what I’m talking about.Ìý Helping to design those accessibility features for the blind, including navigational assist, which transitioned over to God of War Ragnarök, we have everything though – we have navigational assist, we have aim assist for encounters, full narration as well, all menus, all notes, all lower pieces you could find on the ground, everything is narrated.

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Hemmings

Well, that’s Part 2 of the series but tell me about Part 1, there’s been some developments there hasn’t there?

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Cole

There has, yes, indeed.Ìý I worked on that game as well.Ìý Part 1 does include, additionally, which Part 2 does not have, audio described cinematic cut scenes.

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Actuality

He closes the door behind them then strides over to a couch.Ìý He wipes it, then adjusts the pillow before lying down.Ìý Ellie stares at him:

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What are you doing?

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Killing time.

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His eyes are closed.

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Cole

I think it is important to say that not everything is audio described but the majority of the important cinematic scenes are.Ìý When they rebuilt the game, they built it with these accessibility features in mind.

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Hemmings

Now The Last of a Series and God of War are games that are both exclusive to PlayStation but what about the other big console, the X-Box?

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Cole

Yes, yes indeed, the X-Box, yes.Ìý I’m happy to report the X-Box has a great game that I’d recommend to everyone this holiday season and that game is called As Dusk Falls.Ìý It is all about player choice, it is all about quick time events, there’s no need to worry about navigation or anything like that, it’s basically an interactive movie with the addition of choices and all of them are narrated to you, so you can make those choices as a blind person as well.

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Actuality

For most people Two Rock is just a pitstop.Ìý But for us it felt like a trap.

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There’s enough cash in that safe to put the last few weeks behind us.

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On the ground, now!

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Hemmings

These trailers, you know, they just sound so blockbuster like, don’t they?

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Cole

Yeah, they really do.Ìý It’s been an observation that a lot of blind people have made lately that we might want more games all the time but we’re getting the best ones.

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White

That was Brandon Cole and producer Beth Hemmings.Ìý And there’s much more to be said about gaming for visually impaired people that we didn’t have time to mention today, yet another area that we’re promising more on in the new year.

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Chris McCausland, still with us.Ìý So, what’s coming up in the future, what’s 2023 going to be like for Chris McCausland?

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McCausland

Well, as I said, the tour continues till the middle of May.Ìý Recording the radio show, which will be on at Easter, some time round there, you heard it here first.Ìý And I’ve made a travel show, Peter, for Channel 4, which will be on, I believe, roundabout February, we haven’t got a date for it yet but it’s called Wonders of the World I Can’t See.Ìý And, basically, I mean I’ve just never really seen the point in going to places that are known for the one thing that everyone goes to look at.Ìý The idea is, is can another funny person prove to me that it was worth getting off me bum and going to these places, that there’s more going on there than just going to stare at the thing.

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White

I’m quite cross with you, Chris, because I’ve been doing something similar but I’ve been doing it for radio but you see you’ve beaten me and you’ve developed it for television and you’ve had humour.Ìý So, I’m extremely cross with you.Ìý

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Chris McCausland, thanks very much for joining us and have a really good Christmas, thanks a lot mate.

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McCausland

Happy Christmas, cheers Peter.

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White

Great to have him with us.Ìý And just to tell you that next week we have three more guests who are making their way in the entertainment industry – TV, cartoons and, of course, two days after Christmas, Pantomime – Oh yes we are.Ìý Join us for that.Ìý From me, Peter White, producer Beth Hemmings and studio managers Jonathan Esp and Sharon Hughes, goodbye, have a great Christmas.