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´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio 4 In Touch |
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Listen to this programmeFactsheet of this programmeTranscript of this programme Print this page FactsheetAMERICAN AUDIO-BOOKSThe US system of a government funded collection of audio-books, housed in the Library of Congress, has long been a source of envy to visually impaired people in Britain who rely on charity backed schemes. Yet as Jane O’Brien reports from Washington a budget shortfall is threatening the move to replace the antiquated cassette tapes with the latest digital technology. CONTACTS THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS THE NATIONAL FEDERATION OF THE BLIND The National Federation of the Blind is the largest organization of the blind in America. DIGITAL CONVERSION IN THE UK Peter speaks to Peter Osborne, responsible for the RNIB’s audio-book collection to see how the digitisation of their system is progressing. CONTACTS RNIB 105 Judd Street London WC1H 9NE Helpline: 0845 766 9999 Tel: 0207 388 1266 (switchboard/overseas callers) RNIB book streaming Right to Read Campaign SAILING AWAY Tideway Sailability, a disabled sailing organisation, is working hard to recruit visually impaired sailors. Commodore Clare Gray joins Peter to explain more. There is also the first instalment of Indira Sengupta’s audio diary. TIDEWAY A sailing club in south east London that is committed to making sailing more accessible to the people of London no matter what their ability. GENERAL CONTACTS RNIB 105 Judd Street London WC1H 9NE Helpline: 0845 766 9999 Tel: 0207 388 1266 (switchboard/overseas callers) Web: The RNIB provides information, support and advice for anyone with a serious sight problem. They not only provide Braille, Talking Books and computer training, but imaginative and practical solutions to everyday challenges. The RNIB campaigns to change society's attitudes, actions and assumptions, so that people with sight problems can enjoy the same rights, freedoms and responsibilities as fully sighted people. They also fund pioneering research into preventing and treating eye disease and promote eye health by running public health awareness campaigns. HENSHAWS SOCIETY FOR BLIND PEOPLE (HSBP) John Derby House 88-92 Talbot Road Old Trafford Manchester M16 0GS Tel: 0161 872 1234 Email: info@hsbp.co.uk Web: Henshaws provides a wide range of services for people who have sight difficulties. They aim to enable visually impaired people of all ages to maximise their independence and enjoy a high quality of life. They have centres in: Harrogate, Knaresborough, Liverpool, Llandudno, Manchester, Newcastle upon Tyne, Salford, Southport and Trafford. THE GUIDE DOGS FOR THE BLIND ASSOCIATION (GDBA) Burghfield Common Reading RG7 3YG Tel: 0118 983 5555 Email: guidedogs@guidedogs.org.uk Web: The GDBA’s mission is to provide guide dogs, mobility and other rehabilitation services that meet the needs of blind and partially sighted people. ACTION FOR BLIND PEOPLE 14-16 Verney Road London SE16 3DZ Tel: 0800 915 4666 (info & advice) Web: Registered charity with national cover that provides practical support in the areas of housing, holidays, information, employment and training, cash grants and welfare rights for blind and partially-sighted people. Leaflets and booklets are available. NATIONAL LEAGUE OF THE BLIND AND DISABLED Central Office Swinton House 324 Grays Inn Road London WC1X 8DD Tel: 020 7837 6103 Textphone: 020 7837 6103 National League of the Blind and Disabled is a registered trade union and is involved in all issues regarding the employment of blind and disabled people in the UK. NATIONAL LIBRARY FOR THE BLIND (NLB) RNIB Customer Services on 0845 762 6843 Email: cservices@rnib.org.uk Web: The NLB is a registered charity which helps visually impaired people throughout the country continue to enjoy the same access to the world of reading as people who are fully sighted. Trustees from the Royal National Institute of the Blind (RNIB) and the National Library for the Blind (NLB) have agreed to merge the library services of both charities as of 1 January 2007, creating the new RNIB National Library Service. EQUALITY AND HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION DISABILITY HELPLINE (England) FREEPOST MID02164 Stratford upon Avon CV37 9BR Tel: 08457 622 633 Textphone: 08457 622 644 Fax: 08457 778 878 Mon, Tue, Thu, Fri 9:00 am-5:00 pm; Wed 8:00 am-8:00 pm. Enquiry: englandhelpline2@equalityhumanrights.com Equality and Human Rights Commission Helpline Wales Freepost RRLR-UEYB-UYZL 1st Floor 3 Callaghan Square Cardiff CF10 5BT 0845 604 8810 - Wales main number 0845 604 8820 - Wales textphone 0845 604 8830 - Wales fax 9:00 am-5:00 pm, Monday to Friday (an out-of-hours service will start running soon) Enquiry: waleshelpline@equalityhumanrights.com Equality and Human Rights Commission Helpline Scotland Freepost RRLL-GYLB-UJTA The Optima Building 58 Robertson Street Glasgow G2 8DU 0845 604 5510 - Scotland Main 0845 604 5520 - Scotland Textphone 0845 604 5530 - Scotland – Fax 9:00 am-5:00 pm, Monday to Friday (an out-of-hours service will start running soon) Enquiry: scotlandhelpline@equalityhumanrights.com DISABLED LIVING FOUNDATION 380-384 Harrow Road London W9 2HU Tel: 0845 130 9177 Web: The Disabled Living Foundation provide information and advice on disability equipment. The ´óÏó´«Ã½ is not responsible for external websites General contacts Back to top TranscriptIN TOUCHTX: 13.05.08 2040-2100 PRESENTER: PETER WHITE PRODUCER: KATHLEEN GRIFFIN White Good Evening. Tonight we have the classic example of technology developing too fast for us to afford its blessings and we open the audio-diary of a novice sailor. Clip How am I doing here? This is good. The sail's still flapping a bit so you can still pull it in a bit further. That's good, we're sailing quite well at the moment, you see the sail's stopped flapping and we've picked up speed and you can hear that we're rushing through the water. And how do we stop heading for that wall? White And providing she avoids the wall we'll be setting sail with Indira Sengupta later in the programme. But first, the battle for access to books appears to be a never-ending one; the right, that is, for visually-impaired people to have access to the same books as everyone else. The truth, as regular listeners know, is that only about four per cent of books produced are available in a format that we can read - hard Braille, audio, or electronically produced books - and yet it always seemed that across the pond in the States, they were doing considerably better than us, not least because their talking book service was regarded as a part of the Library of Congress, and therefore funded by government; not, as in Britain, reliant on charity. Still, it now seems that there's trouble in paradise. Blind people in the States fear they are about to lose access to free audio-books, because of a budget shortfall at the Library of Congress. The library needs an extra $19.1 million dollars a year, to transfer its collection of audio-books from antiquated tape cassettes, to the latest digital format using flash technology. But congress is expected to grant only $12½ million dollars a year, which will delay completion of the project until 2013, and could also cut the production of new audio-books as well. Well American readers are up in arms about this and they've been demonstrating their concern; our reporter Jane O'Brien joins me from our Washington Studio. First of all, what's wrong with Americans simply carrying on using the old-style books until the new ones come on steam? O'Brien Well the biggest problem, according to the National Federation of the Blind, is that the special cassette players distributed by the library are now so out of date that nobody even makes them anymore, so if they break down finding spare parts is extremely difficult and any repairs are currently done by volunteers. So the whole system is really already creaking at the seams. And although digitising the audio book collection will be good in the long run the shortfall in funding means that it may not happen in time as NFB spokesman Chris Danielsen explains. Danielsen They'll be a period of time when a patron's cassette player may have broken down, the library service will not be able to distribute a new digital player to them yet, because the manufacturing process will be slowed down by the funding shortfall. Even if their cassette player continues to work on and after October 1st 2010 no more cassette books will be made, every book will be produced only in digital format, you won't be able to get any new books until you can get a digital player. It could conceivably be another two or three years before some of the patrons get their digital player and are able to get new books and magazines. White So Jane explain what are the benefits of the new technology which is causing all this angst. O'Brien Well they're quite considerable. The Library of Congress has been at the forefront of developing this technology for audio books, which it hopes will prolong their life and accessibility. The flash technology itself is also far superior to either CDs or cassettes, as again Mr Danielsen demonstrates. Demonstration Player on. Audio files. Current position - folder 2, file 1, time elapsed in file 1 minute. Jeeves was perfectly right. Danielsen Alright it was playing a book already in progress. The great thing about this machine is that even if you're reading several books at once it can remember where you are in each book that you're reading and as soon as you put the cartridge in and turn the power on it will begin reading to you where you left off. Demonstration I looked a cross between a music hall comedian and a cheap bookie. White So what effect will this disruption have on the services they give? O'Brien Well as you mentioned earlier only a very small fraction of books are ever turned into a medium that the blind can use and in America that's only about 2,000 of all books published in any given year are ever turned into audio books. So a very small fraction of printed material is accessible in the first place. White Very similar to here really basically. O'Brien Absolutely. But add to that the possibility that the library may not be able to afford to digitise its entire stock or produce new books while the process is going on and you can see that really any cut back in the service is going to dramatically reduce the number of books available to the blind. And it's causing so much concern that at a recent hearing on the Capitol Hill to discuss this funding issue dozens of blind people from all over the country turned up to voice their concerns. Ellen Ringline is just one of the hundreds of thousands of people who could be affected. Ringline It's pretty devastating, like I said if I'm reading a hundred books a year and all of a sudden that's not available to me anymore, a lot of what I do for entertainment and for personal growth, those opportunities will not be there to the same extent. I mean right now it's not quite the same as it might have been 50 years ago, there are some other sources of these materials, but the source that's most readily available is the audio materials from the Library for the Blind. O'Brien And I think the other point to make is that the library is pretty much the only distributor of non-fiction, like academic papers and current affairs magazines in audio form. So for somebody like Jessie Hardle they're a critical source of information. Hardle Literacy is one of the great keys in society. If we're literate our chances of getting quality jobs goes up, if we're not able to read we lose out on a tremendous opportunity. But what's happening here is basically saying well blind people - we're just not going to fund it and you're going to have to make do with that amount of less books. And so yeah we are losing out on our right to equal opportunity to gain literacy and I think that's something that needs to be corrected. White So crucially what do the Library of Congress say about all this? O'Brien The Library of Congress has been told by the government that it has to work within a very tight budget and that's affecting services and programmes across the board, so it's really not just audio books for the blind. But at the recent senate hearing the chief librarian - Dr James Billington - conceded that this service is among those most severely affected and he warned that if funding was stretched much further the library could soon reach breaking point. But even so John Parry, who's another NFB representative, says the fact that this is having such a disproportionate effect on the audio book service actually violates the basic rights of blind people. Parry This is really a matter of equality, it's whether we're going to put blind people on the backburner and say that they don't need access to printed material like the rest of society. Whether we're simply going to stuff them back in a closet or we're going to present them with equality and let them have access to the same printed material that everyone else takes for granted. White Jane O'Brien, thank you very much indeed. So is this another case of what America does today, we in Britain do tomorrow, or has our own digital conversion programme taken a different course? Joining me from Peterborough is Peter Osborne, who's in charge of RNIB production services and that includes the audio book collection. Can you give a comparison of what we've just heard about - what's happening in the States - and what you're doing? Osborne I think it's very interesting to listen to the issues that are emerging in the States, many of which I think also have rung true for us over the years - the challenge of digitising such an enormous collection, the challenge of offering a service in a digital form to many thousands of people is all very familiar listening for me I have to say. The very astute listener may have noticed in the example of the book being played that the structure of that book and the way in which it's presented is quite similar to what you might experience in the UK. That is no accident at all - the books are all designed using the same worldwide digital accessible information standard that we've all been working on and indeed NLS and RNIB have been part of that for some time now. White Presumably so they can be swapped around in an ideal situation? Osborne That's right. I mean we're aiming at a worldwide standard and I have to say the people at NLS have been instrumental in developing some of that standard during recent years. White So what state are we in then, because I know you've been doing your digital programme which I think applies to about 15,000 books, what stage are you at with that? Osborne So we've now digitised around 15,000 books in the collection. We offer those to about 42-43,000 people in the UK at this stage. There are still a number of books to digitise - more of the complex books I would say, particularly in the learning and skills area, the books that were previously available on cassette. We have some work to do in that area. But by and large we've finished the majority of our leisure library collection. White But presumably we are dealing with rather less books than the Americans - the Library of Congress is dealing with? Osborne Absolutely, an order of magnitude less. My understanding is that the programme in the US distributes in excess of 20 million books a year, which is an order of 10 more than RNIB. So the logistical challenges that they face are very significant indeed. White Because they've been talking about this flash technology, because we went rather earlier didn't we and people are using CDs, digitised CDs, so how does that compare with the flash technology that Jane was talking about? Osborne I think the most important aspect here is the book itself. The standards that govern the production of the book itself and the distribution of the book are pretty much the same in the US and the UK. That enables us to distribute those books in a variety of ways. We chose CD at the time, many of the decisions were made in 2000-2001 and that certainly was the right decision then. I can very much appreciate why a different decision might now be taken, if you think about the way in which music is currently enjoyed, there's as much music downloaded as anything else now and used in different formats. So I think it would be a slightly different decision now and certainly needs to be for the Library of Congress, taking into account that they will be delivering a programme over many years to come. White What's the ultimate answer to this Peter, given that the RNIB's Right to Read campaign still has the aspiration that all books should be available to blind people but you've still got the problem of not being able to get government money for this, how far away from that are we do you think? Osborne I think the ultimate answer inevitably revolves around a partnership with publishing, a partnership with publishers. And that's something we're working very closely on at the moment with a number of key publishers. It takes a long time to achieve tangible results in terms of volume of books that listeners will appreciate But I do think that's where we need to be focusing our energy, we need to be focusing on the publishing industry, how it works, how it publishes its material, what benefits can we extract from working with that industry, how many more books can we realise if actually we work together to achieve greater access to books for more people. I'm fairly sure that's where the emphasis should lie. White Peter Osborne thank you very much indeed. Now, news of the sailing club which is recruiting hard for visually-impaired sailors, and regards entry to the 2012 Paralympics as a perfectly reasonable dream, even for novices. Tideway is one of 200 Sailability clubs around the UK, but as I say they are conducting an energetic campaign at the moment to tempt more people onto the water. In a moment we'll be hearing from one of those who's succumbed, but first we hear from the Commodore - yes, that's what they're called -of Tideway, she's Clare Gray. Gray Its aim has always been since 1981 when it started to be a club which enabled disabled and able bodied people to sail together. It was started by a group of disabled people - polio, paraplegic - and I just happened to come into their first meeting and therefore not a founder member but I've been with them ever since. We started in Greenwich and moved to Southwark in 1990. White And amongst that mix you've got quite a few visually-impaired people as well? Gray Not enough. One of the original founders was blind and was Commodore for quite a long time but as with David Apps, who you sailed with, he found that our sort of sailing was terribly dull because a lot of it was meant for people with physical disabilities, which meant they couldn't jump around in a boat. So we had these glorious little safe boats, no not safe ... White But a good way to get started is that right? Gray A good way to get started, where you don't have to move around in them. White So who are you looking for because I know you have a more or less an annual relaunch? Gray Well this is the second one. There were too many able bodied sailors in Tideway who wanted to sail much more excitingly than the access allowed so I thought well what we need is disabled people who've got perfectly good bodies but who need help and blind and deaf people were the obvious candidates. And David Apps, who'd been a member for a long time, was pushing us hard, so we invented 2Sail. White Right well one of your recruits is Indira Sengupta who's with us. Indira, how did you get involved? Sengupta I live in a building for visually-impaired and blind people and one of the women who'd just moved there recently she's a member of Tideway and she was looking for more recruits and through her I went to the club at Christmas and they said why don't come when it's a bit warmer. White So have you done any sailing before? Sengupta Not a jot, I swim a little but that's the closest I get. White Well you may need to swim a little I suppose, or it might be as well. And why - what is it that's attracted you? Sengupta Well I'm registered blind, I have some vision but very little and actually don't do anything, if you like, sporty or anything like that since my vision started to go, I've very much restricted myself and I just thought - when I heard about this - I thought wow this could be something that I could do, take a risk, challenge myself and enjoy. So that was the idea. White Right. Well what you are actually going to do for us and indeed what you've already started to do is to do an audio diary of your time with the club. You've done a little bit already, can you just set the scene for us? Sengupta Tideway's recently had a launch of their 2Sail 2012 programme and that was sort of my first day if you like, official day. White So we're going to sort of eavesdrop on your initiation really. Sengupta That's right and it was my first sail - David Apps, who Clare just mentioned before, who was fantastic and he's visually-impaired as well, he's an experienced sailor and he went out on the water with me. Apps The important thing is if the boat starts tipping up too much, that you're comfortable, if you let the sail out we'll come more horizontal... Sengupta What do you mean by tipping up too much? Apps Okay, if I pull the sail in quite a bit and the wind gets stronger then we should find that the boat will lean over slightly. Sengupta Oh yes we're tipping yeah, on my side, oh my god. Apps Let the rope out, we'll level off and slow down. If it tipped too much for you just let the rope go and it will .... Sengupta Yeah it was tipping a bit there. Apps Yes and so like we're having a bit of a - more of a gust now. Counteract that by ... Sengupta It's suddenly getting very exciting. Apps Now it'll lean - before the water comes in over the side because that does happen sometimes, then the idea is that we ease back [indistinct words] a little bit, just so that we don't turn too much. Sengupta How am I doing here? Apps This is good, the sail's still flapping a bit so you can still pull it in a bit further. That's good - we're sailing quite well at the moment, you see the sail's stop flapping and we've picked up speed and you can hear that we're rushing through the water. Sengupta And how do we stop heading for that wall? Apps Then we will just have to steer. Now I'm going to turn it so that the front of boat goes through where the wind's coming from because the wind's coming from about two o'clock at the moment. We lose a bit of power as we turn and the sails flap a bit but then when we go off so the wind's coming from a 10 o'clock direction then we're on the other side of it and we can start sailing along again and that's called a tack. Sengupta A tack? Apps A tack - a t.a.c.k Sengupta I was think a t t a c k. Apps That is a tack. White Some interesting verbal gymnastics there but a baptism of water rather than of fire, so that's good anyway. Are you game for some more? Sengupta I definitely am. I loved it. The people there were fantastic and so helpful and my actual experience was great, I was ham fisted and didn't know what I was doing but had so much help and then was able to sail the boat myself for a little bit with help. So definitely, loved it. White Well we will follow your progress with great interest. And just finally, going back to Clare Gray. Indira has made the point, and you made the point, that this was not real wild rough sailing but I mean how far do you think you can actually get people in terms of the progress they make? Gray They can go to the Paralympics, there's absolutely no reason why not but they'd have to have a passion because you need an immense amount of time, the sort of passion that would take them Sunday after Sunday and take them off to all sorts of exciting adventures so that they sail on the sea as well. White But you see these as the sort of mountain slopes, as it were, to get people launched? Gray That's right, yes. White Clare Gray of Tideway and before that we heard Indira Sengupta. You can find out more about Tideway, or indeed about digital books, by contacting our Actionline on 0800 044 044 or by emailing In Touch via the website. And a podcast of the programme can be downloaded from the website from tomorrow. From me Peter White, this week's producer Kathleen Griffin and the rest of the team, goodbye. Back to top |
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