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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 Factsheet´óÏó´«Ã½ I-PLAYER The programme discussed the change from Listen Again to ´óÏó´«Ã½ i-player and the resulting difficulties in using it for visually impaired listeners. Navigating the i-player using speech recognition software has proved difficult compared with the old listen again system. CONTACTS ´óÏó´«Ã½ IPLAYER HELP Tel. 03700 101 338 ´óÏó´«Ã½ Accessibility http://www.bbc.co.uk/accessibility/ ´óÏó´«Ã½ Information on making all aspects of using the internet more accessible ´óÏó´«Ã½ Information on i-player accessibility. E-READERS Guest: Matt Crossley, technical consultant at accessibility consultants Blazie Engineering The programme discussed a variety E-reading tools which are presently available or are about to be released. Products discussed included: Iliad Reader Victor Stream Reader Bookport This is no longer in production. Bookcourrier GENERAL CONTACTS RNIB 105 Judd Street London WC1H 9NE Helpline: 0845 766 9999 (Monday to Friday 9am to 5pm) 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) Tel: 020 7635 4800 (central office) 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) Far Cromwell Road Bredbury Stockport SK6 2SG Tel: 0161 406 2525 Textphone: 0161 355 2043 Email: enquiries@nlbuk.org Web: 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 HELPLINE (England) Freepost RRLL-GHUX-CTRX Arndale House Arndale Centre Manchester M4 3EQ 0845 604 6610 - England main number 0845 604 6620 - England textphone 0845 604 6630 - England fax Mon, Tue, Thu, Fri 9:00 am-5:00 pm; Wed 9:00 am-8:00 pm (last call taken at 7:45pm) EQUALITY AND HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION HELPLINE (Wales) Freepost RRLR-UEYB-UYZL 3rd Floor 3 Callaghan Square Cardiff CF10 5BT 0845 604 8810 - Wales main number 0845 604 8820 - Wales textphone 0845 604 8830 - Wales fax Mon, Tue, Thu, Fri 9:00 am-5:00 pm; Wed 9:00 am-8:00 pm (last call taken at 7:45pm) 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 Mon, Tue, Thu, Fri 9:00 am-5:00 pm; Wed 9:00 am-8:00 pm (last call taken at 7:45pm) DISABLED LIVING FOUNDATION 380-384 Harrow Road London W9 2HU Tel: 0845 130 9177 Web: The Disabled Living Foundation provides information and advice on disability equipment. THRIVE The Geoffrey Udall Centre Beech Hill Reading RG7 2AT Tel: 0118 9885688 Email: info@thrive.org.uk Thrive is a national charity, founded in 1978, whose aim is to research, educate and promote the use and advantages of gardening for those with a disability. Thrive’s vision is that the benefits of gardening are known to, and can be accessed by, anyone with a disability. Thrive has been supporting blind gardeners for over 30 years, and established the Blind Gardeners’ Club with RNIB in 2006 to help gardeners share information and techniques. Membership of the club costs £9 a year and includes: The ´óÏó´«Ã½ is not responsible for external websites General contacts Back to top TranscriptIN TOUCHTX: 12.08.08 2040-2100 PRESENTER: PETER WHITE PRODUCER: CHERYL GABRIEL White Good evening. Later tonight: Portable reading machines or e-readers are creating quite a stir amongst the reading classes but will they be of any use to visually-impaired people? We'll be looking at their impact on people with some sight and those with none at all later in the programme. But first, a classic example of how In Touch is not just a programme but a kind of mutual aid society of the air. Last week Mike Worsley described his frustration at not being able to use the new ´óÏó´«Ã½ iPlayer, successor to Listen Again, indeed he told us about his state of mind. Worsley If they could have kept up the old version while they modify this one, if that's what they have to do, but they've dumped us. I'm not happy Peter, I'm not happy. White But it only takes a plea like that to bring out the best in In Touch listeners so that very soon we had not one, not two but three help sheets for Mike Worsley on how to use it from Roger Wilson-Hines, from Greg Hamilton and from Leonie Watson - all assured visually-impaired computer users. Well on the programme Jonathan Hassell, the ´óÏó´«Ã½'s head of audience experience and usability had insisted that although there were some teething problems the iPlayer could be accessed by totally blind people and indeed individual programmes could be scrolled through and searched as well. But there's no substitute for a one-to-one hands on lesson. Difficult to provide on the air but we've done our best. We've sent all the help sheets to Mike and we've also brought him together with Leonie Watson, a regular contributor to the programme, works for Nomensa which creates accessible websites and also of course for the BCAB - the organisation which represents blind computer users. And just to absolutely compound that they're both talking to us on the internet, which will explain the sound quality. Mike, first of all, with all the stuff we've sent you how are you getting on now? Worsley I can gain access to programmes but I can't navigate through them. I've located the iPlayer buttons but they don't appear to do anything. White So you're reaching the programmes okay but the big thing that you wanted to do, which was to be able to whiz through, find something in the middle of the Today programme or something, you're still having problems with that? Worsley Absolutely. White Okay. Let's bring in Leonie. You've had a look at some of the suggestions, you've got suggestions of your own. What's the key thing here that you would like to convey to Mike and indeed other listeners who may be having problems? Watson There are two key messages at this stage. The first one is that the interface itself is fairly simple to use but the second, and perhaps more important at this stage, is that there are one or two functions that at the moment a keyboard user or screen reader user can't access and one of those is the jumped position or the in-programme navigation function of the iPlayer. But beyond that it's possible to access the different buttons on the iPlayer just using fairly basic keys and I think Mike you mentioned on the show last week it was important that you didn't have to be a computer whiz kid to operate these things. And I think using the up and down arrow keys, the tab key and the enter key pretty much is all you need at the moment to access those buttons. Worsley I have tried those and they don't work for me. Watson I had a look this morning in Windows Eyes 6, which I know is a screen reader of a slightly more recent version than the one you're using, so it may be a matter of a different version perhaps. Certainly with Windows Eyes 6 and recent version of Jaws and [Indistinct words], other of course well known screen readers, those buttons do seem to do the trick. Not much help for you though and makes the situation no less frustrating from your point of view. I don't know, I'm afraid, about your particular version of Windows Eyes and whether, as I said, it is just a flash support [indistinct word] problem. Worsley I've got a friend who works in computers, he's got a later version of Window Eyes than I have, it'll be six or maybe beyond that, and he has the same problem. Watson When I was looking at it this morning I think I went to look at a programme - The Real Life on Mars - with Window Eyes 6 and if I just used the down arrow key to move through the interface to the iPlayer I found a play button and hitting enter on that switched into being a pause button. Can you tell me what happens when you try the same thing on that button? Worsley I alt tab to find your iPlayer console. I then have unlabelled buttons which presumably one has to try to see what happens, it's a good job we're not dealing in jumbo jets. But I needn't have worried because they don't do anything anyway. White I should just say we heard yours going cuckoo, was that your computer or your clock? Worlsey That's our clock. White I'm going to interrupt you both because I'm going slightly cuckoo trying to follow this and we always knew of course that it's very difficult to give a lesson one-to-one on air. I just want to ask Leonie, because clearly in the ideal situation we'd bring you together or Mike, you together with someone else who could give you one-to-one advice, but Leonie what are the key things that this ought to be able to do because clearly blind people won't really be satisfied until they can do exactly what they used to do with Listen Again on the iPlayer, so what are you saying is possible? Watson At the moment I can start and stop a programme from playing. I can return to the beginning of the programme by hitting one button. I can turn the volume on and off but I can't increase or decrease the volume gradually. I can share the programme with a friend or e-mail a link through and I can maximise the iPlayer window all through the flash interface. Worsley But you can't navigate through the programme. Watson No that's the one mechanism, I said at the beginning of the piece, that Jonathan and the team at the ´óÏó´«Ã½ have assured us will have fixed by mid-October, along with the volume slider. White Because that is quite a key thing, clearly if you've got long programmes that's what you want to do, I mean Mike gave the illustration of the Today programme last week. So you're saying with that people are just going to have to be patient until October when the team says it's going to have this licked? Watson I'm afraid so and I do think we will have to be patient. That said the fact that this was launched with the inaccessibility problems in place is not acceptable and it's something I think the ´óÏó´«Ã½ should look at in future very closely. Having said that we are in a situation that we're in and if they can fix it by October and fix it so that the iPlayer remains user friendly as well as accessible, and that's the tricky bit with these two particular functions, then I think we'll be a step closer to a positive outcome. White When you say user friendly you mean by modifying this it might not be as user friendly to the general listener, is that the worry? Watson Yes, the easy solution for navigating within a programme would just be to put in a text box and ask the user to enter a time within the programme they wanted to jump to, that would be the easy way to implement this in an accessible fashion. The problem is unless you know how long the programme is or exactly where the time index you want to jump to is then that's not a particularly user friendly thing to have the user do. It would be much easier say to have buttons that allowed you to jump 30 seconds or five minutes into the future or into the past of the programme. So there's also a need to make sure it's accessible but also user friendly for everybody including screen reader users. White So Mike, how are you feeling now, how far do you feel that you've got? Worsley Well I'm still not happy. I mean you could say well which of the seven dwarfs are you then... White You're grumpy aren't you. Worsley If you want me to sound mellifluous give me back my old player. White Well that's what the man said so we'll see what we can do. Michael Worsley and Leonie Watson, thank you both very much indeed. Well it's certainly true that communication has always been a vital factor for visually-impaired people and access to books, newspapers and other information has been almost an obsession with this programme and we make no apology for it. So all this talk of e-readers these days, not least on Radio 4 where Today, Open Book and You and Yours have all cast their eyes over them, made us wonder what relevance do they have for us. There are at least three of them, either on the market or about to be in various parts of the world, but what do they do and will they have an effect on our access to books and newspapers. First of all, what about for those who can read print? Well serial reader Stephen Hallett has been investigating. First of all, Stephen, just explain for those of us who don't know the principle behind the e-book, what's different about this and reading off your computer screen? Hallett Well Peter I promise not to launch into any jargon and I'm actually illiterate when it comes to computers anyway, so I'm going to try and speak in common speak. But what's important about this is a new piece of technology which is called an electronic paper display or an EPD which basically is a screen which isn't backlit, so it's different from the normal computer screen which can be glaring. I have Macular Degeneration and I find it very difficult to read a screen unless it's inverted. And what the screen on these readers does is it assembles the particles of ink in a form which looks very much like letters on a page and the paper itself looks like ordinary paper of a book. White So it's like the experience of reading, as opposed to what even people with perfectly good sight have often said is fairly uncomfortable, i.e. reading off a computer screen? Hallett Yeah, I mean the level of lighting will depend on where you're sitting and what light you tend to - what ambient light you tend to use to read. The difference is, of course, because being electronic it's fairly flexible and you can increase the font size. So the one which I've been trying, which I borrowed from Borders, is called the Iliad, it's now available for about £399 and it's been on the market I think since about May in this country and has been widely used in the States. It's about the size of a large paperback, the screen's A5 size ... White It's quite like a picture frame isn't it in a way, in that it's sort of flat, you know, that quite surprised me, the shape of it? Hallett Yeah it's flat and it's very light and it's quite comfortable to use in bed, so you can lie on your pillow reading it at arms length. I also tried it in different situations on buses and on tubes and with the largest font, which I think is about 28 point, now in a newspaper you'd normally be reading 10 or 12 point, so it's a large font and it's larger than you'd expect to find in most large print books. So I think probably for people who use large print regularly, for people with Macular Degeneration, particularly for elderly people who want to access quite a large number of classics and other books without having to use optical aids and magnifying glasses this is actually quite a good solution. White So for people perhaps in particular who do read large print effectively? Hallett I think so, I think it's - what it is is a flexible kind of large print, so you can choose the font size, you can change the pages very easily, it's very intuitive and the buttons are quite easy to use. But it does have its drawbacks. White Such as? Hallett Well one of the problems is that only the books that you can access on the machine which are in a pdf format have adjustable font, so if you're reading, for example, the instruction manual that comes in a tiny little probably 8 point, it's a very, very small font. If you try to access anything else, like, for example, the menus or some of the icons at the bottom of the screen they're all miniscule and you have to activate them using a stylus, so unless you can see them or unless you use a magnifying glass to locate where they are and press them in the right position you're not going to be able to operate the machine very easily. White So that could be quite a big drawback. You mentioned - so far you've mentioned the iLiad, what else is there around? Hallett Well the other one which is about to come up is the Sony Reader, which Waterstones are now promoting, and I think will be available in September. Now that's quite a lot cheaper, it's £199. I think it has a smaller memory than the iLiad. But I would suggest that anybody who's interested in investigating these probably waits until the Sony Reader comes on to the market to compare with the iLiad. The iLiad is quite expensive but if it works well for you, you know it does have a huge memory, you can carry about 10,000 books around on a flashcard, and it's reasonably accessible once it's set up. White And how much is the iLiad? Hallett The iLiad is £399.95. White Let's move to totally blind readers because Stephen you've been concentrating on people with some sight but the e-book have a relevance for us. Mani Djazmi has been looking at that. So what was your general conclusion Mani? Djazmi Well in theory it can be made accessible and by that I mean it can be made to talk and read out the books on the machine. I spoke to Matt Crossley, who's a technical consultant at Blazey Engineering who specialise in assisted technology, he says the first criterion is whether its hardware is accessible, so whether it has physical buttons that you can press and a headphone socket which the iLiad does. He then said though that because of the type of software inside the iLiad there are no guarantees that an existing screen reader can be made to work with it and that a bespoke screen reader would probably have to be made from scratch which would take weeks if not months. White So that doesn't sound too promising really. Djazmi No, I mean the alternatives for totally blind people are things which we've mentioned on this programme before like the Victor Stream Reader, Book Port and Book Courier, although there are others available. These are small devices which have been made specifically with blind people in mind, they play audio in MP3 and Daisy formats as well as text which you can transfer from your computer which is read out by a synthetic voice. Where these differ from the iLiad though is that they can't play e-books that you would download and buy from the internet, that's because of the e-books format. These devices, like the Victor Stream Reader, only support plain text documents so books that you might have scanned. The e-books that you get from the internet all come in pdf format, which these devices can't work with and which only some screen readers can read on PCs or laptops. White So is this - this by the sound of it - would be leaving blind people feeling pretty frustrated? Djazmi Well you would have thought so and I certainly thought so but it's not actually the case. I mean I thought that people would be frustrated, after all e-books are pretty cheap, around a fiver in most cases, they're unabridged, which isn't often the case with cheap books that you can get and the fact that you can download them cuts out the tedium of spending hours or days in scanning them. But I haven't actually found anyone who reads them mainly because people don't like being read to by a synthetic voice. White Yeah because I mean that's what it is isn't it - an electronic voice. I mean I know one or two people who do and who actually even speed it up and read like that but I would have thought you might be able to do that for academic books as it were. Just one general point I'd like to put to both of you because one thing that could be worrying is that if the e-reader catches on, and Stephen's sounding quite enthusiastic and so are a lot of other people, won't this deepen the paranoia of the publishing world - the agents and the authors - that their material will then be pirated thus slowing down even more the idea that books could be made electronically available to blind people? Because what I mean is the argument always has been in the past - oh it's such a pain reading off a computer that nobody would really want to do it. Now the publishers weren't even buying that idea, now that the e-reader's come along they're going to say well this is a danger, isn't that right Stephen? Hallett I think it's certainly a dilemma and what's been very interesting is that this technology has been around, although the particular kind of screen which I described earlier, is a fairly new innovation but certainly e-books and documents and books online have been around for a long time. But now that it's reached a mass market and that technology has been made accessible to a very broad market which could also possibly benefit visually-impaired people the publishers have now got wind of this and decided to limit distribution to these pdf files. Now the pdf is a format which using the right technology and the right software could be converted into text and used much more widely using a range of technology. But so far the readers like the iLiad and the Sony only use pdf files and the technology isn't there to make them fully adaptive for blind people. White Yeah I mean some people say well there are a lot of electronic books around even for totally blind people, people like the - things like the Gutenberg project and so forth - and people can scan their own but it's still not quite the same is it Mani, they're the classics the ones on Gutenberg and the other ones we spend about 10 hours trying to.... Djazmi Yeah I mean it's much better than it was but when I was at school - 20 odd years ago - you'd get these classics and get emphysema from the dust that's gathered on them. I mean there are many, many more books that are available online but I mean for instance if there's a book I hear a friend of mine - a science friend of mine - talking about I might find it on Amazon or one of the other internet shopping sites but the chances are I won't find it in an accessible format so I have to scan it. I mean the reason why these e-readers are actually coming out is that sighted people don't really, it's thought, like to sit at a computer and read a book off a screen whereas with these devices they're easier to look at and also because they're small it's the same as reading a Paul Saunders on the beach or something like that. I would suspect that the problem we have at the moment with regards to making them accessible, the pdf format, will still remain because the reason why they are in pdf formats is so that the text can't be manipulated and copied. White It's to make them inaccessible, yep. Well Mani Djazmi, Stephen Hallett thank you very much indeed. And that's it for today but you can call us with your comments, queries and ideas on anything that we've looked at in the programme or anything you'd like us to look at 0800 044 044 is the number to ring or you can e-mail us via the website and as always there's a podcast of today's programme from tomorrow. From me, Peter White, my producer Cheryl Gabriel and the rest of the team, goodbye. Back to top |
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