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Contents
Comments From the CTO of NV Access, Makers of NVDA.. 3
Audio Description in Cinemas. 4
Jerred Mace Discusses OneCourt, a Tactile Way for Blind People to Enjoy Sport 7
Legendary BBC Broadcaster, Peter White. 18
Hannah Mae Aldeza and Derek Lane Say Farewell 35
Final Thoughts and Farewell 44
Welcome to 305
[music]
Voiceover: From Wellington, New Zealand, to the world, it’s Living Blindfully – living your best life with blindness or low vision. Here is your host, Jonathan Mosen.
Welcome!
On the show this week: enjoy sport in a new way with the OneCourt device, legendary BBC broadcaster Peter White talks about his life and work, and it’s our final episode, so we take time to say goodbye and thank you.
Get out those dimpled Chads, pregnant Chads, any kind of Chad you like. Because this is episode 305, and area code 305 belongs to quite substantial bits of Florida. And I know we have many listeners in florida. I’m grateful for all of you. Enjoy your day in the Florida sun, accompanied by the famous Florida orange juice.
Advertisement: And it’s sort of serendipitous that the final episode of Living Blindfully is associated with a Florida area code because, of course, transcripts of Living Blindfully have been brought to you for a long time now by Pneuma Solutions.
We began our transcripts with a grant from InternetNZ. I’m grateful for them as well because with that grant, we were able to prove the value of transcripts.
Like a lot of accessibility features, they have benefit beyond their core audience. It was always important to me that we find a way of including the deaf-blind community in the Living Blindfully community, that they were just as able to participate in the public discourse as everybody else.
When that grant ran out, Pneuma Solutions took it on. And I want to thank Mike and Matt for their support over the years. They have been amazing sponsors, and also encouraging supporters of what we’ve been doing here on Living Blindfully. I have considerable admiration for both of them.
Matt is one of the most gifted software developers in the business. He’s a thinker. He’s an innovator. He’s contributed a great deal to our community.
As has Mike Calvo, who has more amazing, innovative ideas than most of us have had hot dinners. And they keep on coming.
Now, do visit PneumaSolutions.com to learn about all of their offerings including Remote Incident Manager, Scribe for Meetings, Sero, and many more. I know there’ll be a lot of innovations coming well into the future. So that’s PneumaSolutions.com. P-N-E-U-M-A-Solutions.com.
Guys, thank you so much for your support of Living Blindfully.
Comments From the CTO of NV Access, Makers of NVDA
As you know, since the closure of Living Blindfully was announced at the end of August, we’ve had a freeze on new contributions. And it’s timed perfectly, right? Because we’re emptying the vaults on this, our last episode.
However, I do want to make an exception for one case because I think not doing so would be grossly unfair, and I’m going to read you this email from Gerald Hartig, who is the Chief Technology Officer with NV Access.
He says:
“Dear Jonathan,
I listened with interest to your podcast on September the 20th. At the end of the episode, you read out an email expressing concerns about NVDA, claiming it’s hindering employment and unfairly copying JAWS. We feel that the email contained several inaccuracies and mischaracterizations of NVDA, and it’s important to address them constructively. In the context of the few episodes remaining in your podcast series, We hope that you will be able to somehow share these thoughts with your listeners, as it is important to understand that the diversity that NVDA brings strengthens the blind and vision-impaired community, rather than weakens it.
Firstly, it’s important to recognize that NVDA plays a crucial role in supporting over 250,000 blind and vision-impaired people worldwide. We’ve heard countless stories of how NVDA has empowered students in their education and securing employment. Our mission at NV Access is to provide a free, open-source screen reader that broadens access to technology, especially for those who do not have the financial means for costly alternatives. This mission has always been about inclusion and empowerment, not about competing with, or undermining other products like JAWS.
Choosing the right tool for the job is incredibly important. Some individuals find that NVDA perfectly meets their needs, while others might prefer JAWS for their particular requirements. Both options have their strengths, and it’s crucial for individuals and technology assessors to thoroughly research and understand the options available to ensure they choose the tool that best fits their needs and circumstances.
JAWS offers a wide array of features and customization options, and we’re glad that it continues to be a robust choice for many. NV Access has never discouraged anyone from using JAWS or any other paid screen reader. In fact, we often hear from the community that JAWS and NVDA complement each other well, with many users relying on each for different tasks. For those who live in a country or speak a language in which JAWS is not available, NVDA exists as a capable and valuable alternative.
Regarding the concern about intellectual property, we want to clarify that NVDA has always been developed independently, with great care and integrity, out in the open as a public open-source project. Most, if not all, of the features in NVDA are suggested and implemented by the community itself, with thorough review and oversight by NV Access. Blind people have made NVDA what it is, and will continue to do so in the future. We’re incredibly proud of our achievements in making technology more accessible to blind people around the world.
NV Access and Freedom Scientific have a respectful and cooperative relationship whenever we cross paths. Both organizations share the goal of improving accessibility for the blind and visually impaired community, each offering different solutions to meet the wide range of needs our users have.
Having options is a strength, not a weakness, just as having multiple car manufacturers benefits consumers. Competition fosters innovation, and it ultimately enriches the entire community.
While NVDA’s feature set might differ from JAWS, it’s by no means less capable. We have a vibrant and dedicated community of over 200 blind and vision-impaired developers and translators who contribute to NVDA, ensuring the features our community needs are available to them.
Finally, the idea that NVDA might create employment obstacles because it’s free doesn’t align with what we see every day. NVDA opens doors by removing barriers and providing people options, allowing many people to access technology and pursue employment opportunities.
We firmly believe that having multiple screen reader options is a tremendous advantage for everyone in our community.”
Gerald, I’m so glad you wrote in with that. I appreciate the time you clearly took to craft an articulate and well-reasoned response, and I’m glad we had the opportunity to air that perspective here on our final episode. Were we continuing, I have no doubt it would have been a lively topic. So thank you so much.
Audio Description in Cinemas
Ian Harrison writes:
“Hello, Jonathan,
On your 10th of August podcast, a contributor talking about the failings of audio description in cinemas brought back memories of me naively trying to advocate better ways of delivering the service to industry players and institutions like the RNIB here in the UK.
The film industry was just getting into its stride, with audio description becoming almost standard, and cinema chains proudly showing off these wonderful headsets that made you look like a cyberman out of Doctor Who. In my experience, these headsets worked maybe 1 time in 3, either being low on charge, or failing to find the presumably wireless connection to the track. My ideas were ignored by all, and I gave up in frustration.
Some attempts have been made by developers in the app space to provide AD from a smartphone that would sync up to the film, but I think these failed due to rights issues or costs.
My idea was to develop a system on the smartphone that simply captured the AD stream in the cinema itself, thus avoiding copyright problems. It would also mean the cinema-goer was in charge of their own experience, not relying on massive and embarrassing headsets and low battery problems. It would also cut down on costs of equipment and training for the cinemas. I had no idea what the technical challenges would have been, but was depressed that no one seemed to have even the slightest interest in exploring the possibilities at the time or in the 10 years following.
Since then, technology in phones and headphones such as AirPods has come on in leaps and bounds. But I doubt very much if I, as an individual, would have any more luck advocating the idea today than I had 10 years ago. Perhaps airing this on your platform may spark some interest in the right quarters.
Keep up the much-appreciated hard work, and thanks for the pointer to nature space. It’s great!”
No problem, Ian.
It is a very interesting subject, and I would love to see Apple do some work on this at home as well. There are times when I’m watching a movie with people who may not necessarily want the audio description, and I do. And of course, Bonnie does.
But technology and synchronization should be at a point now where if you’re watching, say, on an Apple TV, you could choose just to have the audio description coming up on your iPhone as a dedicated AD receiver. So if we can do this in the home, hopefully, we could do this in movies as well.
And yeah, there have been some attempts to do this with specific apps. And I think over in the US, Comcast have this with their Spectrum app. But it would be nice to see Apple integrate this at some time in the future in their accessibility offerings.
Self-driving Cars
Voice message: This is Edward from Dallas, Texas. I’m trying out this WhatsApp to send a message.
Just curious how you get these into your, … I know that you can export them, I think, as a file. Just curious how you do that.
Secondly, I wanted to comment on the episode with the 3D self-driving car. I live in a big city, and I don’t think they’re available yet where we are. At least, I haven’t heard. I’ve heard of something called Zumo that is, I think, trying to break into the market down here in Texas, but I haven’t heard as far as anything on that front.
But I’m here to tell you, I’m like Jonathan. I would love to try this out myself. And, of course, I would take the good old Zoom H1 Handy Recorder with some binaural microphones.
And I really liked the way he spoke over it. He was in the center, while the background was in the back, and you could actually hear everything going on.
I’m curious, when you did get dropped off, you always have that, … Okay, when I get dropped off at work in the morning, first of all, are you in the spot I need you to be? Secondly, is the curb on the right, on the left? When you got out of the car, you seemed pretty confident where you were, but maybe you didn’t show that in the demo. But how do you feel that the drop-off part is getting there?
It made more sense because you could push the horn button, which I really like. It’s not obtrusive. It just tells you where it is. And the good thing is, if you’re standing in a spot, at least it tries to get as close to you, it sounds like, as it possibly could. I’m thinking of a big mall, or a hospital, or something like that. Of course, there’s so much more to go with these. But the drop-off, I was curious how that worked for you. Did you feel like it just dropped you off somewhere?
We always get these Uber drivers that you ask them a question in English, and they go, no speak English. And you have to deal with this. Great, where are we going to be? And believe me, in a big city like I live in, it’s dropped me off in some pretty crazy places. One of the most craziest ones, I think, was some big parking garage, the entrance to it, actually, and that was not great. You could hear the gate bridge going up and down. And I was like, we need to get out of here as soon as possible.
Jonathan: Whether it’s GPS technology or this technology, it often is the last few meters or the last few feet that are the problem, isn’t it? So locating your way in when it drops you off and being clear where you’ve been dropped off, that is a challenge. And I’m sure that that is being worked on.
Regarding your question about getting WhatsApp messages on the podcast, what we’ve been doing is exporting them. They come out as M4A files. You do have to do a little bit of work in Reaper to make M4A files play in Reaper. You need to install a codec. One way to do that is to get it by installing VLC. There are other ways as well.
Once you’ve done that, it’s just a case of importing the WhatsApp file in M4A into a Reaper project. And of course, if you’re using some other tool, as long as it’s capable of playing a standard M4A file, it is good.
And obviously, having WhatsApp integration towards the end of this podcast’s life has been a great decision. The audio quality has improved. I think it incentivized people to contribute because it was so easy to do so. So I’m glad that experiment worked.
If you do decide to record a trip in a self-driving vehicle, you may want to consider getting another handy recorder that Zoom has just announced. These people are prolific, and I do want to thank Samuel Greene at Zoom for assisting us to produce the Zoom audio tutorials earlier in the year. I had so much positive feedback about those audio tutorials, and I hope they will continue to serve people as they get into this wonderful world of recording. But now, Zoom has come out with a thing called the H2 Essential. This has no XLR inputs, but it has 3 microphones. So I guess the picture in my head is it’s kind of like the H1 Essential in its form factor, but you can determine which mics you record with at any given time. You can record in mono, you can record in stereo and more. It sounds like a pretty nifty device, and you can find out more about the H2 Essential on their website.
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It all started when Yalim from ListenLater got in touch and said, “I think you might be interested in this.” I sure was, and I know a lot of other people in our community are as well.
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Well, after we interviewed Yalim on Living Blindfully, he said he got so much reaction, he wanted to advertise and keep it all going. So good on you. I really appreciate that. Thank you for your support.
Remember, now and into the future, head on over to ListenLater.net.
Jerred Mace Discusses OneCourt, a Tactile Way for Blind People to Enjoy Sport
There are a lot of blind sports fans out there, and this technology that we’re going to be discussing today is an opportunity to consume sports in a new way. It’s called OneCourt.
When I read about this in the NFB agenda and the exhibits, I thought this is absolutely intriguing. And so Jerred Mace from OneCourt is with me to talk about this.
Welcome, Jerred! Good to have you with us.
Jerred: Thanks so much, Jonathan! It’s great to be here.
Jerred: How did you get into this endeavor?
Jerred: I guess I’ll start a few years ago.
I was a junior at the University of Washington, and I came across a video of a blind person at a soccer match. And he was sitting in the stands with a woman who watched the game below, and at the same time, moved his hands across a game board to represent the action on the field.
So it was really intriguing to me. It was through touch that he was engaging with the action.
And as a design student, I started to think about, how might we use design and technology to bring that experience to so many more people? Because, of course, you realize it’s not a very common experience, but it’s a meaningful one.
Jonathan: There’s a possibility that I might be a bit of a curmudgeon here, right? Because I’ve grown up with radio commentaries of sports games, very vivid descriptions of the game. Like a lot of people, we all have our favorite commentators. Cricket is my thing in New Zealand.
Jerred: Okay.
Jonathan: And here in the United States, that’s barely heard of. Although the United States cricket team just did remarkably well in the Cricket World Cup. It was extraordinary.
But what value do you think this technology adds? Perhaps you can describe what it does and how it works?
Jerred: Yeah. So basically, we’ve built a laptop-sized haptic display that’s capable of communicating really dynamic, fast-moving information. It’s perfect for sports.
So we basically take in live data that’s being collected by the sports teams and leagues. And at the professional level, they’re all doing it. whether it’s the NFL, or NBA, or MLB here in the United States, and many more. They’re all collecting this really rich information about where the ball is, where the players are, and they’re doing it very quickly. And what we do is access that information, and then translate it into a dynamic haptic experience so people can essentially watch the game with their fingertips.
It’s a single hardware device, but the surface is comprised of a silicone tactile graphic. It’s a removable graphic, so you can watch different sports on the same device. But you’re essentially feeling vibrations move underneath your fingertips and palms, and that corresponds to the action on the field.
Jonathan: And where are you at with it? Is the technology available today, or is it still in prototype stage?
Jerred: Yeah, we’re in a pilot stage.
Funny enough, I just flew into Orlando this morning, straight from Texas last night. We were piloting this technology with the Rangers, so we were in stadium.
That’s another piece I often like to point out, is this technology doesn’t just work for at-home viewership which of course, so many people are listening and watching sports at home. But it also works in stadium, which is miraculous.
Fans are sort of describing what it’s like to, in many cases, feel like a part of the action for the first time. We’re sort of avoiding the classic feeling of okay, everyone around me is cheering, but I’m waiting for description. And we’re seeing with the speed of this data and our technology, it’s reducing that, and people are experiencing the game in real time.
So we’re currently piloting. We’re starting with a lot of in-stadium work, hence, our work with the Rangers. But eventually, the goal would be to have devices in every stadium as an accommodation, and as well as every home. We want people to be able to watch sports where they want to.
Jonathan: So the end user could purchase this, or they could be available for pickup on loan in the stadium?
Jerred: Yeah, that’s the goal. And we’re not quite there yet. We’re still pretty early.
Jonathan: Because I know you were at NFB last year, you may have seen the resolution that went by last year about the problem getting real-time commentary in the stadiums now.
Jerred: Yes.
Jonathan: Because the way these stadiums are constructed means that radio signals are often blocked out. And sometimes, there are other limits that are being imposed, and people have to listen on the stream. And of course, streaming audio has inherent latency. So what you get is everybody cheering around you, and it might take 20, 30 seconds before you find out what they were cheering about.
Jerred: Yeah, I would say that’s one of the core pain points that we’re addressing with our in-stadium work. And actually, we had to get really creative to get around this problem.
In some stadiums, they’re getting better. They’re introducing closed circuit radios, and they have that accommodation. They had it in Texas last night, actually, at Globe Life Stadium.
But of course, some stadiums and arenas don’t have that, so we had to get creative. And what we did was essentially, use that same data that we create the haptics for. We’re also using it to create a data-generated audio feed. And it’s a really short form thing. We call it audio bytes, but it’s essentially small descriptions of the action that help contextualize what’s going on. So in baseball, that might be strike or ball. And at the same time, you’re feeling that on the surface of the device.
Jonathan: I don’t know whether you’re familiar with the work that the Australian Open has been doing (that’s obviously tennis). They have some sort of audio overlay that a blind person can listen to that gives audio feedback about the ball movement. And without demeaning tennis, it’s a relatively simple game to track in that regard because you’re just sort of wanting to know where the ball is and when it’s gone over the net, that kind of thing. So they’re doing that in an audible way.
Is that something that you’ve seen in action at all?
Jerred: We’ve definitely looked at it. We love the folks at Action Audio. We’ve talked to them only on one occasion, but we really like what they’re working on.
We’ve seen some challenges on our side. I guess what’s great about it is that it’s extremely scalable, right, as an audio solution. And some of the challenges we’ve seen are sort of the learning curve, perhaps.
It can be difficult, I think, to get to the nuance of the game, especially without a reference. And we’ve tried very hard to think through this problem and figure out, okay. Can we do this without a physical object, without a reference of the field? (And in many cases, folks have never seen a tennis court, for example.) So having an accompanying graphic can be super helpful.
And I bet they’re thinking about stuff like that, too. I’m excited to see, yeah, how they continue to approach it.
But they’ve made awesome progress in the world of tennis. And it actually, I think, inspired us in part to look at tennis as well and see. Man, how can we approach this game? And how might that be different from how they approach it?
Jonathan: You mentioned the learning curve, and that was really my next question. If I were to be given a OneCourt device, would I, as a blind person, instantly be able to interpret that data? Or would I need to be taught what I’m feeling, what to feel for?
Jerred: What we’ve seen is that OneCourt alone, the haptic experience does have a learning curve. But the caveat is OneCourt plus audio. And of course, many fans (and that’s not all fans), but many fans are using an audio source, whether that’s the radio, or our audio bites, or their friends and family, that audio and the haptics together are extremely holistic. And we don’t see much of learning curve with that.
Really, the biggest thing we see is just the learning curve is understanding the game itself. If you’re approaching a new game like baseball and you’ve never watched it or listened to it before, that’s often the learning curve. It’s just, okay, what are the rules of the game? What’s the procedure? What’s the process?
But once you’ve got that, OneCourt is a very intuitive experience. We find most people get it over the course of 5 minutes. I mean, it’s pretty quick.
Jonathan: If we could go through a standard baseball delivery, if you will, so somebody’s ready to pitch the ball, what do I feel exactly on the display at that point when that action begins?
Jerred: With baseball, we got to do something that we had never done with any of the other sports we’ve tried, which we’ve done football and basketball to date. But with baseball, we got to break it up into 2 different views. So on the right side of the device, we have a tactile graphic of the strike zone. So you’re feeling where the last pitch was relative to the batter. You’ll know, is this batter a left-handed batter or a right-handed batter? And you’ll know where every single pitch lands. Is it inside of the strike zone? Is it out? And there’s some really cool nuance there that I’ll have to talk about later.
On the left side of the device, there’s a tactile graphic of the diamond. So of course, the 4 bases – the infield line, the outfield line, the foul lines. Essentially, you can feel both at the same time. You can feel where the pitch was on the right side, and then you can feel it cross the plate, so to speak, on the left side. And then if it’s hit, then you can start to track that location on the left. So it’s sort of toggling between 2 views, if you will.
Jonathan: What sort of feedback have you had from test users?
Jerred: I mean, I can speak very highly of last night’s test. Like I said, we were with the Rangers, we were with fans in stadium, and it was miraculous.
I think the biggest feedback we get that’s in towards the positive is that this makes people feel like they’re a part of the action. And that just puts wind in our sails. It’s very meaningful and encouraging to know that this is driving an impact already, even though we’re so early, but we can see the potential.
But that’s not to say there’s not room to improve with our device. We’ve seen limitations in just how much content we can show, right? Like, we can’t show every single player at the same time. It gets sort of muddied.
But I think in future iterations, our goal is to just enable personalization so that users can select the content that they want to watch. You could select your favorite player and watch them as they make stride towards home plate. Who knows? Just a bunch of different selections and filters to sort of build your own experience. I’m very excited about that. And I think that’s where we’re going, so it’ll be really cool once we get there.
Jonathan: [laughs] I used to be a product manager, and I would get approached at companies I worked for by people who had great ideas. It actually got them to a fairly mature point before they thought, maybe I should ask a blind person what they think of this thing. [laughs]
Jerred: Yeah.
Jonathan: And here you are, at at least your second NFB convention. How did you arrive at engaging with the consumer movement in such a good way?
Jerred: It’s been our identity since the beginning, right? I think we’ve known, been so committed to designing with. That is a core principle for our team. And I think, for many teams emerging now. And that’s critical, right?
I always talk about it as like proximity to the problem space. We all find ourselves on the visual spectrum somewhere, and that often changes throughout our lives.
My personal experience as a kid is actually different than it is now. I had some visual challenge as a child prior to a surgery, and I definitely experienced what it was like to miss out, particularly on participating in sports. I think people would assume my limitations, and try to talk me out of things that I was fully excited about and ready to do, despite those challenges. Like I said, we all find ourselves on that spectrum.
And I think it’s important that as designers, we ally ourselves with people across the spectrum of visual identity and just understand how different people are experiencing, in this case, sports, right? So for us, that means co-design sessions, a ton of surveys, and doing as many demos as we possibly can to just get as much feedback from different people. Because that’s been a key learning too, is that blindness is not one single thing. It’s many things, and it’s experienced by people in many different ways.
Jonathan: So you basically did your due diligence and you found okay, here’s where a whole bunch of blind people are, so here’s where we need to go to get some perspectives on this idea.
Jerred: [laughs] Yeah, absolutely. I think NFB for us represented a hub. It’s a place where we could go to show our technology.
And look, we made the mistake last year of not exhibiting. Part of that was financial. We were all students at the time. This was not a startup, really. It would sort of just become a startup at that time.
But now, we have the resources, and this is our full-time job. We’re very committed to this mission, and seeing it through.
And NFB has been a great resource, whether that’s in Washington State, our community there, or here, nationally. It’s great to connect with folks.
Jonathan: So when you exhibit, what do you have to show?
Jerred: We have a set of devices that we bring with us so you could come by the booth and experience the game for yourself. You can feel it.
I think it’s so critical, especially when we’re talking about haptics, that people are able to feel it. You can only talk so much about haptics.
Jonathan: Right.
Jerred: At some point, you’ve got to make that jump to the real world, and that’s why it’s so valuable for us to have a physical presence.
And I think that because it’s so intuitive and so easy to learn, it makes it a really good fit for conventions and exhibits like this because people can just come up, understand it immediately, and enjoy it. We make that click.
Jonathan: Sports often lock out deaf-blind people because they can’t access the commentary. Have you done much research at this point on how the OneCourt technology can open up the world of sports to deaf-blind people?
Jerred: That’s a fantastic question. We have done some work, and this is exciting because it relies exclusively on the tactile, right? So for us, that means developing unique and distinguishable haptic effects that mean different things, and then building those associations over time. So we call it our haptic language, but it’s essentially just how we create different effects that mirror the actions on the field.
I’ll give a good example. A home run is quite a different event than a strikeout. And how can we create a vibration that feels like a home run that sort of captures the emotive quality? Of course, it’s spatial in that it relates to a position on the baseball diamond on the field, but it’s also emotional in that it’s often either a hooray or it’s a bummer, depending on your team.
Jonathan: Yeah. [laughs]
Jerred: So similar with a strikeout, what we try to do is look at the physical qualities of those events and try our best to represent and translate those into a haptic experience.
Jonathan: I can’t wait till you get your head around the rules of cricket, because I would love to see this in action in a game that I’m really familiar with, and that I love.
So let’s talk about cost. I mean, how much do you think it’s likely to cost somebody to have one of these units? And then when they do, how do you connect the sports commentary that you’re interested in to the device?
Jerred: You’re asking all the right questions today. [laughs]
Jonathan: [laughs] Oh, good to hear.
Jerred: Yeah. So to answer the first one, we are seeing some very exciting trends on cost. Cost is coming down for us rapidly. Prototypes used to be very expensive, in the thousands. But we’re already seeing prototypes that are only around a few hundred dollars. And I think at the consumer scale, if we can reach that scale, I would expect to offer this to consumers for less than $500.
It will likely depend too on how we position that with the subscription. There likely needs to be a subscription given the data access. It’s like watching TV. It’s like streaming, so there will be a likely subscription component. But we’re still figuring out exactly what the optimal price is, not only for consumers, but for us as a business that maximizes scale and accessibility.
I think everyone knows this at this point, but assistive technology is often prohibitively expensive. And I think what’s exciting about OneCourt so far is I think we’re looking to break that mold. We’re not going to have a $10,000+ device. This is going to be affordable to the consumer.
So yes, the second question – how do you sync it? This is a question we haven’t yet fully resolved. Currently, we’re doing a lot of work on the backend, essentially, to manually sync that up. Our guess is that in the future, whether it’s a web-based application or something, or on the device itself, you’d be able to select okay, what’s the provider? Who am I receiving my audio from? Is it OneCourt, in which case you don’t have to do any syncing? Is it online radio? Many different sources, right? We expect to be able to pair with those.
Otherwise, there may be a manual syncing, which you could think of as okay, I’m going to turn on my audio, and I’m going to press play on the haptics as soon as I feel the first pitch, or something like that. And that’s kind of how we’re doing it right now. But yeah, it’s yet to be fully resolved. And that is an important, I would say, question and process that we need to figure out because it’s going to be foundational to the experience.
Jonathan: And OneCourt needs to know about each sport in question, right? So you either, say, support baseball or you don’t.
Jerred: Yeah. And of course, we’re trying to do as many sports as possible. For us, it really just comes down to, is there data available?
Jonathan: Right.
Jerred: And in the beginning, we thought about capturing this data ourselves. Could we set up cameras at the stadiums and capture this data? But that turned out to not be necessary because the teams and leagues are already doing it. So, so long as we can access that data, which can be a real challenge, we’re in a good position to support that sport.
And I would say OneCourt is best suited for fast paced ball sports. It does get a little bit tricky when you look at things like gymnastics, or wrestling. Those are a little bit harder.
Jonathan: You don’t want to track me playing Monopoly then.
Jerred: [laughs] That might be fun.
Jonathan: Yeah. [laughs]
At the risk of banging on too much about cricket, there’s a lot of telemetry data being collected there, too. Like I hear the commentators referring to how fast that ball was bowled, and it comes through in kilometers per hour or miles per hour, and all that sort of data. So look. There’s a lot of it about, and it’s just a matter of collecting it, and packaging it, and outputting it in a way that this device will recognize.
Jerred: You’ve got it pinned. That’s exactly what we do. And we’re getting better and better at jumping from one sport to another. In the span of what feels like a few months, we put together baseball and delivered this just unforgettable experience yesterday. I can’t get over it. I’m kind of coming off that high.
I flew in at 5 AM this morning. So, it’s kind of…
Jonathan: Did the Rangers win?
Jerred: They didn’t.
Jonathan: Oh.
Jerred: Yeah, bummer there. But it was…
Jonathan: Who were they playing?
Jerred: They were playing the Padres.
Jonathan: Right.
When can we have one of these, do you think? When are you likely to be on the market officially?
Jerred: We’re likely to start collecting pre-orders this year.
Jonathan: Right.
Jerred: I would say we’re going to give it probably another year after that. It’s really challenging to say exactly when we’ll get there, but I’m really encouraged by what we’ve built so far.
I think we’re very close to that scalable model, in terms of design. But also, in terms of user experience. I think we’ve nailed it so far, and we’ve got to get it to the point where we can scale it. Because right now, it isn’t. A lot of our processes are very manual.
Jonathan: Yeah. And the other thing about scale is the more use cases you can find for something, the more units you can sell, the cheaper you can produce. So I guess I have two questions relating to that. One is, do you see a market beyond blind people for a device like this? And do you see a market beyond sports for a device like this?
Jerred: I’ll actually answer the second one first, because that’s where we’re going to enter first, is use cases beyond sports, but still within the BLV community. And we’re seeing some really cool work on our design side, where sort of to date, the device acts very much like a TV, and that it just emits information, there’s really no input.
But the next device that we’re working on is going to have much more interaction. And I think what that’s going to unlock, in addition to just more personalized sporting experiences, it’s going to unlock gaming, which I’m just so thrilled about. People will be able to play their favorite games, whether that’s classic arcade games like PacMan, or Frogger, or Pong, or something. Maybe even to more modern games.
We’ll have to see sort of the limitations. But I’m really encouraged by that, and I do think there are other opportunities for just the experience of dynamic content because that’s what our device is super good at.
In terms of use cases beyond the BLV community, we’ve gotten some interest from those on the autism spectrum for using this technology in stadiums in sensory rooms, right? Because in a sensory room, there’s no way to interact with the game currently. And that’s sort of the point, right? It’s a removed space.
But some folks have said, “Well, this is awesome. It’s a lower stimulus experience, so I could engage with this in a different way that wouldn’t be overstimulating.”, and that’s really encouraging.
It’s hard to say, I guess, beyond how many problems might this solve. I think people often think very creatively and come up with lots of good ideas and use cases, and we’re trying to earn the right to do it. We feel like we have to solve this. We have to deliver a compelling response before we can do a bunch of other things, because we have a hard enough time staying focused.
Jonathan: You mentioned that it’s an adjunct to the audio. And certainly, when you’ve just got the device, I can imagine that the audio is really telling you, helping you interpret what it is that’s going on under your fingertips.
But if you had this device for a couple of years (and you see a lot of sighted people doing this – watching a game with the sound down), do you think that once you’d become familiar enough with your particular favorite sport, you would have a good idea just from OneCourt what’s going on without the audio?
Jerred: Yeah, I think we can totally get there. And we are seeing some of that already. Some fans are saying, “Look, I’m in stadium. I don’t want to listen to the radio. I want to talk to my friends. I want to hear the crack of the bat. I want to yell and scream, just take in the atmosphere, and not have to worry about audio.” And we are seeing some of that already, which is really encouraging, and it’s a testament to the information that our devices is providing.
I guess I have my personal doubts. Like I think, I guess my experience is that it’s much more holistic to have that multi-sensory experience.
But the great thing is people can choose for themselves, right? As I mentioned, we’re on this trend of personalization, and I think people should be able to decide okay, do I want audio? Where do I want audio from, if at all? Similar with the haptics. What do I want the haptics to tell me? Is it the position of the players? Is it the ball? How many layers are there that we can sort of offer as filters?
Jonathan: When you’ve got a baseball team, you’ve got a bunch of fielders positioned around the pitch, the diamond, right?
Jerred: Mmm-hmm.
Jonathan: You could presumably choose to see the way that the field is positioned as well. Is that one option that you have?
Jerred: Yeah. This is a really interesting point. And I don’t know where I gleaned this insight, but this is not an original idea. This was definitely learned from someone else. But it’s sort of a key difference, I guess, between how we perceive information visually versus through touch. And that’s with vision, you’re seeing the big picture first and then picking out the details. But with touch, you’re assembling the bigger picture by starting with the details and building that up into a more robust model.
And I think what we’re seeing on our devices, showing everything at the same time is not preferable. It’s not good. [laughs]
Jonathan: Right.
Jerred: It’s very challenging.
So what I expect that experience to be like is essentially toggling between different players and sort of building that understanding of the layout. So you might be able to pretty quickly swipe or click to all 9 players on the field and sort of build that understanding of where everyone is very quickly. We haven’t yet figured out if we can do it all at the same time. It doesn’t look like it. And part of that too is just our limitations of the technology. It’s not as high resolution as a multi-line Braille tactile graphics display.
Jonathan: Yeah. Listening to you describe this device, I don’t know if you’ve come across the Monarch, which is something that NFB has been involved in.
Jerred: Yes.
Jonathan: And I thought to myself, they’ve just developed an SDK or in the process of nailing it down. and software from you that would be running on a Monarch might be a very interesting experience as another way of getting into the blindness market.
Jerred: Yeah, we’ve actually talked with APH about this. We’re friends with the folks over there, and yeah, what an awesome group and what an amazing product. I mean, we’re huge fans, and I’m really excited to see what they’re doing.
Of course, I think my favorite thing about the Monarch is the supporting software, is the graphics library. I think that’s so cool.
I guess in terms of developing for it, we’ve actually had some good discussions, and I think there’s some ideas around how can we focus on the education of sports through different graphics and perhaps tutorials?
It’s a little more challenging, I believe, to do animation on that device. I don’t think… It’s not quite suited for that. Maybe someday, it would be.
But the static tactile graphics, but with really in-depth explanation and sort of frame by frame walkthroughs almost of different types of plays, and I think focusing on the education could be a really cool point of collaboration for us.
Jonathan: How can people keep tabs on what happens next with OneCourt? Are you updating a blog, or a website, anything like that?
Jerred: Yeah. Folks should definitely go on our website. It’s OneCourt.io. That’s O-N-E-C-O-U-R-T.I-O. We have a form on there, if folks are interested in getting in touch. You can reach out with any inquiry.
I also recommend following us on LinkedIn. We’re most active there. We do quite a bit of posting.
And then, we have an Instagram as well.
So folks can find us. Feel free to reach out to us any time. We’re always happy to chat.
And if we’re in the area, we’ll always do a demo as well.
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Legendary BBC Broadcaster, Peter White
On my blindness-related radio shows and podcasts over these many years, I’ve often discussed the importance of blind leaders, blind mentors, the need for blind people in public positions of visibility and influence.
From a very young age, I wanted to work in radio. Some radio people and a vocational counsellor at the School for the Blind tried to convince me it wasn’t possible.
So I made the application, raised the funds, and was granted a short-term radio licence at the School for the Blind to set up my own radio station. I then invited everyone in the industry I could think of to come and watch blind people do radio.
So when it came time to find a job, getting into the industry was easy. I had the networks.
And one of the reasons why I was so confident that I could do radio was that I knew it was already being done. A blind New Zealander who’d visited the UK told me about a blind broadcaster named Peter White, who not only presented a programme about blindness issues, but radio programmes on other topics as well.
When my then-girlfriend and I saved up and went on an extended holiday to the UK over our university summer break, I couldn’t wait to tune in to Radio 4 to hear my first instalment of In Touch. In those days, my hearing was much better, and the first thing I noticed was the wonderful faint sound of Peter’s fingertips skimming across his hard copy braille script. He was the real deal.
Although his broadcasting career began even earlier, this year, Peter’s celebrated 50 years of In Touch, and I couldn’t think of a better guest on this final edition of Living Blindfully than Peter White.
It’s wonderful to talk to you, Peter. Thanks for doing this.
Peter: Oh, I’m very flattered.
And the fingertips now go over kind of a much more sophisticated piece of technology, so they don’t make quite as much noise. But a lot of people said they liked the noises, and hearing the odd page crinkle, you know. So it never seemed to be a problem, not even with the technicians. [laughs]
Jonathan: We have a surprising amount in common, you know, despite the 22-year age difference.
We both have the same 2-handed Braille reading technique from what I can gather, and I’m not sure how many others do. And I read your book. I was really delighted to hear that you used that technique.
Peter: Yeah.
Jonathan: We’re Beatles fans, and we’re cricket tragics. And we got the MBE, although they call it an MNZM over here now.
And we even both, believe it or not, have an older brother named Colin, which is extraordinary. And he’s blind as well. My brother Colin is blind. [laughs]
Peter: This is getting a bit spooky.
Jonathan: It is freaky, isn’t it?
Peter: [laughs] Yeah.
Jonathan: I want to start at the beginning. Do you ever imagine how different your life might have been if your parents had been more mollycoddling?
Peter: Uh, that’s a very good question. Do I? I wonder about it now more than I did because I think parents are becoming more mollycoddling, generally.
I mean, I grew up on a council estate in England, in Winchester, actually, which was quite a posh place. But actually everywhere still, I mean, had council houses by then.
And we just got let out of the house and wandered around the street, and rode trolleys, and rode bicycles and got on roller skates, and Colin and I joined in, basically.
I mean, people would come out about 8 o’clock and shout shrilly for their child. And if they were lucky, the child came back.
But that was the kind of environment that I grew up in. And to be honest, that’s the way I brought up or allowed to grow up my children.
But I know it’s different now. So I’m not sure I did it. I have imagined it.
I just find myself arguing now with a lot of parents about well, for goodness sake. Give them a bit more freedom. [laughs]
Jonathan: Did you use echolocation? You were out there just listening to sound bouncing off walls to get around on your bike?
Peter: Subconsciously, yes. I mean, all the time there was a bridge near our house, a railway bridge. And so it was an arch that we walked under. And one of my early memories is kind of yelling in that arch and hearing the sound come bouncing back off the top of the arch. No one said it was echolocation, but I was just told that that’s what happened to sound. And I then did realize it was. And so we did. You know, I flicked my fingers and clicked my tongue sort of subconsciously.
Jonathan: Yup.
Peter: And again, I can remember at the blind school I was at, some snotty parent watching me approach the front door of the school and doing this, and suggesting that this was a very blind thing to do, as if that was somehow a criticism, you know. [laughs]
And I thought God, (even at my age), I thought, why don’t you grow up?
Jonathan: Exactly, yeah.
Peter: That’s the way we do things.
Jonathan: At my school for the blind, we were actually actively discouraged from using those techniques. And yet, they provided so much information. It’s extraordinary, isn’t it?
Peter: I know. Yeah, I think we were as well. We were discouraged. And then, people came along with the more sort of sophisticated ways of getting around, but it didn’t seem to occur to them that we’d got a fairly sophisticated system that you used, which your body provided you with.
Jonathan: Many parents have little knowledge of blindness, of course, before they find themselves with a blind child. Is enough done now to set optimistic expectations of what a blind child might become with the right training and opportunity?
Peter: I’m sure that varies quite a lot. I mean, some interesting things are happening now. Because when I was young, it was accepted you would go to a special school. Mainstreaming hadn’t started. So in a way, my parents sort of got the idea that in a way, it wasn’t their job, that the school would do it. But my parents were brilliant.
And the fact that I had an older blind brother explained why I feel fairly comfortable in my skin as a blind person. In fact, I think I’m more comfortable in my skin as a blind person as my older brother is, because he was the older brother. I just got all the benefits from him having gone through having to show people what I could do. [laughs] And I got the benefit. I’m not sure whether people are told enough.
I’m sure it varies, but I still think the most crucial thing is whether the parents themselves get it, whether they get it in an instinctive way, that they’re looking at their child and thinking that’s what they ought to be able to do. I suspect there isn’t enough formal encouragement.
My parents did have what was then known as a, well, they were called home teachers, but they were social workers for the blind, basically. And again, it so much depends on who you meet. They had one woman who just was very good, and who got to know Colin and I, and encouraged them very much in what was I think, their instinctive reaction to let us do things because we were out riding bikes, and roller skates, and so forth without being taught how to do it in a sighted way. We just did it. [laughs]
Jonathan: Yeah.
Peter: But probably not enough. Probably not enough still, I would say.
Jonathan: Leaving your family and going to that Dickensian environment in Bristol was clearly incredibly harrowing for you. And yet, it seems like you have a grudging appreciation of the education you ultimately received.
What’s your assessment of the education blind people are getting in Britain now? Can they have both? Can they have a normal family life and get access to all that they need to maximize their potential?
Peter: I think they can, in ideal circumstances. But circumstances are often not ideal.
It’s interesting. I’ve been talking about this quite a lot with the Paralympics having just taken place. Because one of the things I think which isn’t happening for a lot of blind and partially sighted kids is the opportunity to play sport. I think we’ve got more opportunity to play sport.
I hear now from quite a lot of children and young adults who say, “I was at a sighted school when they went and picked up teams. They didn’t pick us.” There wasn’t a concerted attempt to get this done.
I was encouraged to see that the Paralympics GB, that organization which runs the Paralympic movement in Britain, has now written to the government to say this is happening. A lot of kids aren’t getting the opportunities. People are coming through, but they’re not coming through the schools. They’re coming through other organizations, quite often teams that are being set up by blind people. I mean, there are organizations in Britain (British Blind Sports, that kind of thing) who can do it, but the schools often aren’t. So I mean, you didn’t ask about sport. You asked about education, generally. But I think sport is a good illustration of where people do get left out.
In more general education, I do meet people coming out of mainstream schools who are very confident, and clearly are getting good educations. But I wouldn’t say it’s across the board yet, by any means.
Jonathan: I must confess, I’ve been on a bit of a journey about this subject because I used to be a strong proponent of pockets of excellence in education. Because if you place a blind child in front of a regular classroom teacher, you’re effectively placing a blind child in front of someone who is illiterate in blindness terms, because most of them don’t know Braille, and that concerned me.
But we’ve just completed an inquiry here into abuse in care, and there were some pretty harrowing stories that came through about abuse in a blindness context in environments like schools for the blind. It’s a tricky situation, isn’t it? Because some of those environments were full of bullies, and some of the staff weren’t exactly top notch either.
Peter: That certainly happened. In my case, some horrific things. I sometimes wonder why I’m as confident as I am, because some of the things that happened were shocking and were never reported.
I actually did report one case when I was 7 to the headmaster, and discovered that nothing would happen. I learned the lesson then. But it wasn’t any good doing that. All you could do is either put up with it, or be so bolshie that you can be quite intimidating as a confident child. [laughs] But that is a lot to expect of kids. They shouldn’t have to do that.
In special schools, that happened. But of course, we know it happens in mainstream schools as well. So I’m not sure how you deal with that in specific ways from the point of view of blind children. I think all children are vulnerable to it, aren’t they?
Jonathan: They are. That’s another unfortunate thing we have in common, by the way. Because when I was 8, I was subject to some abuse. I told my mother about it, who was livid. And my mother was a working class woman who never took on the system, but she took on the system in that case because she was just so outraged.
And the result of it was that they sent me to a psychologist to find out why I was making up stories.
Peter: Oh, God! Yeah, and you do hear that sort of thing so often.
Actually, in my case, the abuse wasn’t against me. It was against somebody else.
Jonathan: Right. So you blew the whistle.
Peter: I must have been a terrifying child because I didn’t get abused. I think I had a sharp tongue. A sharp tongue can be a surprisingly effective deterrent, even to big bullies, it can be quite a deterrent.
Jonathan: [laughs]
Peter: They may not stop straight away with what they’re doing to you. But often, they don’t come back to do it again.
Jonathan: And also, nimble fingers. So some people are just born with a natural aptitude for something. And you quickly became a fast Braille reader. And I smile when I read of your reading technique, which sounds the same as mine. Can you explain the way that you process two pieces of information at once as a braille reader?
Peter: I wish I knew exactly how I did it.
Jonathan: [laughs]
Peter: I mean, if you’ve read what I wrote, you will have an idea, and it sounds as if it’s the same. I mean, I’m doing it now. Actually, it’s not so easy to do on a Braille.
Jonathan: Yeah.
Peter: I mean this has got 40 cells. Actually, the one I’m looking, it’s only got 32 cells, and that makes it… For those who don’t understand Braille, that makes it narrower. And so, it’s not as easy to do it. And you’ve also got to press a button that takes it down a line. Whereas reading a more old-fashioned Braille book, they were a bit wider.
So what you’re doing is, my right hand progresses along the line. But before it gets to the end of that line, my left hand has gone down a line. So at one point, I am reading or processing both what my right hand is doing on the end of the top line, and my left hand is reading on the other end of the line below it.
And I don’t really quite know. Sometimes now, when I read to people, I try to analyze what I’m doing. I guess your brain is just dealing with it, and sorting it out, and putting it into an order that makes sense. That’s the only way I can explain it.
But you don’t find many people who do it. You really don’t.
Jonathan: No.
Peter: And it’s certainly taught.
Jonathan: And I’m glad I gave that one to you because I find it hard to explain as well. But because I’m a computer guy, I describe it as like having a buffer where information is kind of briefly stored in that buffer for you to discharge at the right time.
Peter: Yeah. Well, that’s where we see you. I had those braille skills. I don’t think even had technology been developing then rather than now, I think I would have struggled with it.
I mean, I was doing really fast Braille reading age 6 and winning competitions against kids who were 10 and 11. [laughs]
I only wish I had the same aptitude for technology now. You and I have talked about this because you helped us with another program that I was doing where I was really trying to suggest that a lot more had to be done to help the people who are either in the wrong generation, or just don’t have the natural aptitude for technology and doing some of the things which those of us who struggle can still see what amazing things it makes possible.
Jonathan: Yeah. I get the impression that makes you quite grumpy that people can be fairly derisive of blind people who don’t find this technology intuitive.
Peter: Well, I think other blind people can be quite deranged [laughs], …
Jonathan: Yeah, yeah.
Peter: which makes it worse. Yeah, I am grumpy about it, but I’m also becoming increasingly anxious about it because it’s becoming very clear that we’ve only just kind of got to the beginning of this process at the moment. And I guess that will be fine for the generation that’s growing up in that situation. I hope it will, anyway. But for people who are further behind, or don’t do it very well, it’s exciting to look at what may be possible. But it’s also quite frightening if people are left behind.
I think the problem is, you’re right, I think, to highlight the derisive attitude because it makes people who perhaps weren’t up until that point quite confident, it tends to make you lose your confidence in yourself. Have I suddenly become less capable? Am I suddenly less clever? Is dementia setting in? All sorts of worrying things in the kind of situation that we live at the moment.
So yeah, I am grumpy about it, and I’m worried about it, and I’m annoyed with myself about it as well.
Jonathan: There are some extremely gifted people who struggle with technology.
I interviewed Lord Blunkett a few years ago, and we were talking about the techniques that he used, which was essentially to have a team of people recording a lot of information on cassette. And then, he would process information that way.
Peter: I know.
Jonathan: I would read about this when he was Home Secretary in other important roles, and I said, “I was so tempted so often to call your office and say, do you want me to come and give you some assistance with this stuff?”
And he said, “I wish you had.”
And I said, “But the trouble is, you’re on the treadmill by then, and it’s very difficult to get off that treadmill. When you have a job to do, taking time out to learn those new techniques, it’s a big thing to ask.
Peter: Actually, I mean, that’s a really good point. And when I was thinking about this interview, I was thinking that’s the problem. I would claim I’d been too busy to learn. I’m not sure that’s true, but that’s what it felt like at the time.
I don’t only do In Touch. I mean, I’ve worked as a full time broadcaster now for the best part of 50 years. And I was working on daily programs, and really quick processing of news stories and having to write them up, and then go out, get recordings. And by the time you got home at night, you were too knackered to do anything else. [laughs]
Jonathan: Yup.
Peter: So in some ways, the more able you’d been, or the more unusual kind of things you were doing, the less easy it was. I mean, I do know quite a lot of blind… This is not a generalization, but I know quite a lot of blind people who were in dead end jobs that bored them to death and they had time on their hands and spent that time very profitably learning. Quite a lot of computer programmers who got shunted into dead ends, but used the time to master the technology properly.
Jonathan: What technology are you using on a daily basis?
Peter: I use a laptop, I use JAWS, I use a BrailleSense as my reading machine. I’ve sort of come up through various ones, like Braille Lites and so forth, to the BrailleSense. I know there are more sophisticated things.
What I don’t use is a smartphone. I just grapple.
When you spoke to us, you described your feelings when you first encountered a smartphone and were asked to believe that this was going to be a great breakthrough, and all you saw was a slab, a smooth surface. Well, that’s still all I see. [laughs] When a lot of my colleagues, and friends, and younger people, and people my age are using them confidently to do just about everything you can imagine, from booking a holiday to doing the shopping.
Jonathan: Nevertheless, Braille was something that you just took to. And then, your academic potential was recognized so you went to Worcester. Everyone knew that you were going places after that. And you ended up attempting university twice, and dropping out twice. Did the system fail to prepare you properly for university?
Peter: I’ve often asked myself that question. But I don’t think I can blame the system because I saw a lot of people go from my school through university do very well, enjoy it.
One of the things that I think happened was that I’d had enough of formal education. It’s not an entirely satisfactory answer to this because, again, quite a lot of the people who were friends of mine at blind school had had the same. But you know, I just felt I’d gone away to boarding school at 5. And at 18, I was still doing it. And then, I was asked to go into basically another system. And although the systems were different, it was still an institution, still felt like an institution to me. So that’s one of the reasons.
But I think, the other problem is I just made the wrong decision, and I made the wrong decision twice which is kind of unforgivable.
First of all, I did law, and I didn’t enjoy it. I knew I didn’t have the temperament to be a lawyer. People thought I did because I was gobby and because I like to argue, but I didn’t have the fascination for minute detail that lawyers need, I think. It was wrong.
I should have recognized that journalism was much more my métier. You need in journalism to be thorough, but you can be much more freewheeling with the facts. You can make the facts do what you want them to do. You can make a point.
And also, I think on the whole, it has to be a point that you believe in, which of course in law, it doesn’t. It has to be a point that you’re making to represent your client.
There were lots of things, so I don’t blame the system for that. I blame myself for making a lot of wrong decisions and not knowing at that age what i wanted to do.
As soon as I found what I really wanted to do (which I guess was broadcast, that’s what I wanted to do), and miraculously, I found I could, and there were opportunities, and I found my way in quite in a very different way to the way you described, actually, but found my way in. As soon as I did it, I mean in a year, my life changed. I was more relaxed. I got this job. I found somebody I wanted to spend the rest of my life with and started to have kids, which I always wanted to do. And suddenly, I’d gone from what was an empty life to what was a deliciously full one.
Jonathan: You’d found your calling.
Tell me about your passion for radio, which I know helped you to some extent get you through some pretty dismal times at school. But there are many of us who have that passion for the medium, I think.
Peter: Oh, yeah. I mean, again, early memories, you know. I have a little box in the corner, and the noise is coming out of it.
Anything that came out of a radio fascinated me. It could be music. But often, it was speech. I was listening to programs well beyond my kind of age group that I should have been.
Jonathan: [laughs]
Peter: One of my memories is I was listening to a program on radio in Britain called Any Questions which is still on, which is politicians basically being asked questions.
Anyway, it must have been around Christmas, and they got talking about this. And it was suddenly revealed that Father Christmas was just a figment of everyone’s imagination.
Jonathan: [laughs]
Peter: I was about 6. I rushed into the kitchen and berated my mother for lying to me about this mythical Father Christmas.
That’s the kind of thing that I associated with radio, that it told you what was going on and it didn’t patronise you, because it thought it was talking to adults.
Jonathan: I mean, it was a golden era too, when you were growing up. Hancock’s Half Hour, The Archers, Take It From Here. I mean, all those great shows that I still enjoy listening to. It was just a golden time.
Peter: Yeah, I know. It was a brilliant time, yeah.
Jonathan: Did you get into the pirate stations when they were around?
Peter: Oh yes, absolutely. Now, I can remember finding Caroline and Radio London. And I remember, despite my lack of technical ability, I realized that if I plugged the aerial on my television into my ordinary transistor and put it on the windowsill next to the window, I got much improved broadcasting quality and levels from the pirate stations. I was down in Winchester, and they were in the North Sea. [laughs] So it did make quite the difference, really.
Jonathan: It’s just extraordinary. I’m a collector of a lot of those old air checks, and I honestly believe that Radio London is the best commercial radio station that has ever existed anywhere in the world, because it took that quirky British sense of humor and combined it with the American slickness and the jingles.
Peter: Kenny Everett is the classic example of that on Radio London.
Jonathan: Yeah.
Peter: But there was Kenny, there was a guy called Dave Cash.
Jonathan: Canadian guy. Yeah.
Peter: Kenny and Cash.
Jonathan: Yeah.
Peter: That was the program.
But there were lots of others as well who came through London. Tony Blackburn, not quite such a brilliant exponent of the art, but he was from Caroline. But no, London was a wonderful station at its height.
And I remember the last days of Radio London. They mourned publicly for about 48 hours.
Jonathan: Yes.
Peter: Well, the British government decided to close them down and gave it to the BBC.
Jonathan: Good on you, Anthony Wedgwood-Benn. But I’ll tell you what, that last hour of Radio London, which they pre-recorded, was just beautifully done. Beautifully done.
Peter: It was. Yeah. It was.
So have you got that, Ben?
Jonathan: I’ve got it all, yeah.
Peter: Ooh, I’d love to hear that.
Jonathan: I can give you some airchecks of Kenny and Cash, and all sorts of things.
And of course, it’s worth mentioning that Tony Blackburn did almost literally jump ship. He started on Caroline, but then he liked the Radio London sound, and he moved over to Radio London for the jingles. [laughs]
Peter: That’s right. And then, he jumped to the BBC and invented a dog called Arnold.
Jonathan: That’s right. [laughs] That cart must be worn out by now.
Peter: It must be.
Jonathan: You know, sometimes in life, if you’re lucky, the timing’s just on your side, isn’t it? And you were fortunate in that BBC local radio, really, in the wake of the pirates, was just spinning up when you were seeking to enter the industry. And it also just so happened that the local radio station you went to was looking for a blind person, specifically.
Did you ever give serious consideration to turning down that opportunity to do that show for blind people for fear of being typecast?
Peter: Oh, yeah. Yeah, I did. In fact, I mean, I went down to Radio Solent.
Again, huge bits of luck I’ve had. It sort of makes me so annoyed that people go on about blindness, how terrible it must have been. I had so much good luck, you know, like having an elder blind brother, which is probably the best thing that happened to me.
But all sorts of things. Going to local radio at the right time. I hitchhiked down, and got given the bums rush, really. Was told well, we’ve got everyone we need. Thank you very much. Don’t call us. We’ll call you.
I went back home and prepared to hitchhike back to university, and the phone rang, and it was a producer, a guy called Ken Warburton, who said, “I’ve just been told that you came down to see us. I wanted to talk to you.”
I got excited, and then he said, “I’ve got this blind program.”, and my heart sank because that is not what I wanted to do.
I started off by trying to tell him that was not what I wanted to do. And I got halfway through that and I thought, don’t be an idiot. [laughs]
Anyway, he puts up with that rant on my part, and we agreed that I should go down and see him.
I went down to see him, and he immediately gave me a lesson on an old ewer tape recorder, and showing me roughly how to get levels, and sent me out to do something for him. I mean, that was just so so fortunate.
And of course, I knew if I started on that program, I could work my way into other programs. And it took quite a time. It did take a long time to do it. It took me about a decade to do what, had I been able to see, I think I could have done in 6 months, maybe less, because I had the necessary skills. I had the voice, I had the command of language, I had the enthusiasm. I loved radio.
There were a few technical difficulties, but they were not insurmountable. It was just that it took them a long time to have the confidence to give me the chance to do that. But once it started, it just grew.
And sooner or later, I got where I wanted to. It’s why I’m still doing it, I think, because I think I started 10 years too late. So I think I better stop 15 years too late.
Jonathan: [laughs]
And you and I both know that the biggest problem blind people face is other people’s perceptions of blindness.
Peter: Yeah.
Jonathan: How did you hang in there? You must be quite a resilient, confident person to take those knockbacks and just insist no, I do have what it takes and I’m going to persist.
Peter: I actually blame myself for not being more pushy. I mean, people say I must have been pushy. But I think, given what happened in the end, I didn’t have any more skills 10 years on than I had at the beginning, really. I mean obviously, I learned a few tricks of the trade. But I think I should have been more pushy than I was. I wish I had.
And I watch people now. There’s a blind guy called Gary O’Donoghue now, who is a friend of mine.
Jonathan: Oh, yeah.
Peter: And he’s kind enough to say that I blazed the trail. But he’s certainly carried it to the place where I wanted to get. [laughs] And I’m delighted, because he’s proved that it’s possible.
I mean, this is a guy who was lying face down a few minutes after Donald Trump was shot at doing live broadcasting from the United States for the World Service.
And that’s what I wanted to do. I’ve done a lot in the time, but I’ve never quite done that yet. [laughs] I was live on air when the hotel was bombed in 1984 that Mrs. Thatcher was in the Conservative Party conference. So I was on air when that happened. I wasn’t lying face down in a hole with Norman Chabot, but I was broadcasting. And I’ve had quite a lot of those kind of situations which make you think this is the real deal.
Jonathan: Gary is an extraordinary broadcaster. He and I know each other pretty well, and we geek out on audio technology and things like that.
But the way that he covered that story was extraordinary because he coaxed information out of people through his calmness that other journalists didn’t get, and he got some major scoops about that.
Peter: Yeah. He did.
And it’s one of the things I realized quite early on, which was that sighted people, potential interviewees are quite often reassured by your blindness because they expect some arrogant sort of pushy reporter. And I used to find, for example, if I went to people’s houses to do interviews with them, people found, they realized when I went in that I might need a hand with, they might have to show me a chair, show me there was a table where there was a plug to plug something into. And by the time I got around to interviewing them, You sort of knew them, really, in a way that I can get things from people rather more readily. I mean, I got to the point in local radio where they used to send me out on delicate stories because they said, you get more out of people than other reporters do.
But Gary, you’re right. I’ve been delighted as Gary’s progressed through the system, really.
And he did resist. I mean, he’ll come and do things for In Touch because we’re mates. But he resisted getting sort of typecast, if you like, which could happen. I think I’ve proved you can do both. But, you know, [laughs] I’m delighted to see how things have gone for him.
Jonathan: And here you are, 50 years hosting the same show, In Touch. It’s an extraordinary achievement.
Why do you think the BBC allocates that time on its flagship talk radio network to the blind community, which is a tiny audience?
Peter: It is, and you won’t be surprised to know the number of times they’ve tried to get it off.
Jonathan: [laughs]
Peter: [laughs] Again, bits of luck here. We had a brilliant producer in the early days, a lady called Athena Heschel, and she fought for this programme. She wasn’t blind. And that’s why I sometimes get annoyed when people sort of imply that only people who are blind can help other people. It’s not true. She got it. She got it.
And even when I first went to see her, it was very clear that basically, she wouldn’t put anything on In Touch that she didn’t think blind people would approve of. I mean, clearly, we don’t all agree about everything, but she understood what touched the wrong nerve and therefore, allowed people to do it.
And I think it’s because of that, and because of the level of support that the programme got from blind people who sometimes moan about it and they still moan at me. You can’t do radio without upsetting people, really. If you don’t upset anyone, you’re not doing it right because people have got lots of different views, and they need to be reflected. But I think it was partly that.
One of the things I was really convinced about was that the broadcasting needed to be of a professional standard. And this is where I think my Braille reading really came in, because some of the people who did it early who were pioneers, and they were doing things, but they weren’t necessarily very good at kind of having control of the script, and having control of the material.
And I think, because we got to the point where we were putting stuff on which was, without being cocky, every bit as good as The World Tonight, or News Broadcasting, or The World at 1. Because we were doing things to that level, the temptation to say, “Yes, of course, there ought to be a blind program, but there just aren’t blind people who can do it satisfactorily.”, they couldn’t say that. And because they couldn’t say that and it’s become difficult for them to shift it, there was an attempt to shorten it not very long ago, which we’ve fought off. [laughs]
Jonathan: Yes, yes, lots of letters to feedback from angry of Tunbridge Wells, and and and quite right, too. That’s what I say.
Peter: Yeah.
Jonathan: You’ve avoided the human interest trap. So there are some human interest pieces on In Touch. But what I notice with disability-related programming, if there is any, is that it never really gets into that hard-hitting stuff that affects people every day.
I was very impressed recently, for example, with the interview that you did with Matt Stringer from the RNIB. And you rightly really called him to account about some extraordinary things that are going on in that organization.
And when I heard that interview, I thought to myself, you know, this could be on the Today program, and that’s the kind of current affairs we need.
Peter: Yeah. And I’ve always thought that that’s what we should be doing.
It’s interesting because, of course, in a way, we put blind organizations under the sort of microscope that they don’t get put under by mainstream programs. The difficulty, I suppose, is that because it’s quite a narrow strand of public interest, we are going to go for those organizations, really. [laughs] And I mean, if things go wrong, it is going to be those organizations. And so, they probably feel they get unduly…
I mean, the same would probably apply to guide dogs because when things are going wrong (and guide dogs are also having their problems in Britain at the moment), it’s us that goes for them, and they probably feel we’re unfair to them.
But of course, they have such power. And therefore, if you have power, you need to be spoken to by people who feel that you’re not just allowed to act as if you are the only authority on a subject.
But of course, we also try very hard to call other people who are not directly involved in visual impairment like governments, for example. We do try to call them to account as well.
Jonathan: What was it like engaging with Lord Blunkett who was such a senior figure in the government, and also a blind person who you, I presume, knew well? You’re a similar age, and you’ve had a similar background in terms of education.
Peter: I used to enjoy it, actually. We did have quite a few jousts.
I do remember when he was first made a minister. I went in to interview him, and I think, he thought well, at least now, they’ve got to treat me with a bit of respect. I’m going to be the Minister for Education and Employment, for goodness sake.
Jonathan: [laughs]
Peter: And my first question to him, which was sent by a listener but I put it to him was, “So, Mr Blunkett, are you going to do as much for blind people as Mrs Thatcher did for women?” And he was momentarily speechless.
Jonathan: [laughs] Well, that doesn’t happen often with him because he’s quite the raconteur, and he’s normally pretty quick on the retort.
Peter: Oh, absolutely.
Jonathan: Yeah.
Peter: No, and he did. His retort was very good, which is, “It’s the role of every MP to represent all their constituents. It is not my job as a minister to simply represent the group that I happen to be a part of.”, which I think is a fair enough answer to the question. But I don’t think he was expecting to get it as the very first question.
Jonathan: [laughs]
Peter: I think I even forgot to say congratulations on being appointed a minister.
But I’d say we’re mates now, but it took a long time. But our interest in football and things like that has cemented our relationship.
Jonathan: Yeah, I don’t know if he’s back listening to the Archers or not. He had a bit of a dilemma on the Archers for a while. So I don’t know if he’s doing that again.
Peter: Well, I think they’re still trying to turn The Archers into EastEnders, which, you know, they want it to be much more kind of raunchy and hard-edged.
Jonathan: They’re George Grundy.
Peter: Yeah, exactly. But those of us who quite liked it in the old days were just a few mooing cows.
Jonathan: Walter Gabriel.
Peter: Absolutely. God, I’m impressed, Jonathan. I’m impressed.
Jonathan: I’ve been listening to The Archers for 50 years. And actually, they took it away. When the transcription service started charging too much in 1982, they took it off New Zealand radio, and that was my first political campaign. I wrote to the minister to say, “Bring The Archers back.”
Peter: [laughs]
Jonathan: And he said, “We don’t interfere with operational matters with our public broadcaster.”
So then luckily, somebody would send them to me via cassette. And now, of course, I get them on podcasts from BBC Sounds.
Peter: Right.
Jonathan: Yeah.
Peter: So you’re a world authority on the subject. I can go back quite a long way. In fact, because of my age, I can go back even further than you. I can remember Tom Forrest being charged with murder for shooting Bob Larkin in his poachers.
[laughter]
Jonathan: Now, you’ve also presented on television. And Gary and I talk about this as well because as a blind person, when you listen to your own work on the radio, you are fully able to consume it and critique it. But with TV, you can never fully review your own work because you can’t see it. Did that ever bother you?
Peter: A bit, although people weren’t backward in telling me when they’d say, “Why didn’t you comb your hair? Why are you so scruffy?”
Jonathan: [laughs]
Peter: What I loved about television, I must admit, I really enjoyed the skill it needed to match words to pictures because that’s the thing that people think you’re going to find hardest to do.
But if you’ve got a good relationship with your cameramen and your producers, (but particularly the cameramen and camera women), …
I always took a lot of trouble over my relationship with the guys and girls on the cameras. I would stand and talk to them about the story.
Because that’s another thing I noticed with producers. They’d often say they’d tell them what to film, but they wouldn’t tell them why. They wouldn’t tell them what the story was.
I always took a lot of care to say this is what we’re trying to do with this. And so these are the pictures we want.
And they would then afterwards say to me, these are the pictures we’ve got. This is what you’ve got. And so trying to match, that was something that I profoundly enjoyed, and I think got reasonably good at. So yes, I mean, you did have to rely on people, whereas as you say, you can listen to a broadcast back and say oh God, I don’t sound to be quite on top of that, or I’ve oversimplified such a thing. And you can’t do that with television. You just have to trust the people around you, I think. And that was why I took a lot of trouble to the technicians as well as the producers.
Jonathan: Britain seems quite progressive in some ways. We’ve talked about you and Gary, and there are a number of other blind people working for the BBC. We talked about David Blunkett, all in quite prominent, visible positions. So they’re on people’s TV screens and on people’s radios.
Do you think that prominent roles like those in broadcasting and politics make it easier for other blind people to get ahead? Or does the average Brit view people like you, and Gary, and Lord Blunkett as some sort of anomaly?
Peter: I think they do, and it’s very annoying that they do that.
I mean, it’s often suggested that well, I’ve got something special. I’ve only got the same skills that sighted people need to do that job. And we’ve just found ways around the fact that you can’t see, which in radio isn’t that much of a problem anyway.
I mean, the problems are all attached to other aspects of your life as a blind person, like traveling around. But that’s just a question of persistence, really of saying that this is what I have to do to achieve this.
But yes, people do. They often come out with this line of well, you’re different.
And I will say well, I’m not different. I was at school with kids who were much cleverer than I was, who could probably do these things.
I would say all the people you’ve mentioned are confident. The more I thought about it, the more I think I’m justified in saying that I’m comfortable with who I am. That was why I was slightly thrown by your very first question about had you ever thought about what life might have been like if you’d had more protective parents.
And I thought, no, I’ve never thought about that. It’s always never occurred to me that I could be anyone other than the person I am. [laughs]
Jonathan: Just as we close, is there anything that you haven’t yet done in broadcasting that you’d like to do?
Peter: Oh, that’s a tricky question.
I’d love to have done more politics. I really would. I envy Gary that. Not in an aggressive way. I’m really glad that he’s done it because he proved that.
I went through a small phase when I was about 16 or 17 of wanting to be Prime Minister because I thought I could do it.
And then, I’ve realized since that David Blunkett got almost within touching distance of that. There was a time when we did a program about, is it something that could happen?
And I got correspondence on.
So, yes, I’d have liked to have presented the Today programme. 6 to 9 in the morning, absolute first with the news.
Again, I think Gary could have done the Today programme. He worked on the Today programme.
Given the amount you listen to the BBC, you’ll know about John Humphreys, who presented the Today programme for years. My understanding is that John was pushing quite hard for Gary to get a chance to present the program.
I think that I would have liked to have done one of the top of the range news programs – Today, World at 1, PM, any of them. And I haven’t made that, and it’s a bit too late, I think.
Jonathan: Well, that’s interesting because I have also been in touch over the years with a blind Zimbabwean cricket commentator, and I wondered whether you might fancy yourself on Test Match Special.
Peter: I have done. I have commentated on an over of cricket.
Jonathan: Right.
Peter: For BBC Radio Solent. [laughs] Because I was up in the box chatting to the guy that normally did their commentary, and they knew me quite well, and they knew how much I love cricket, and we’d been talking about how you could tell what a stroke was. So I actually commentated on over. I reckon I got 4 out of 6 right, really.
Did you really believe that that Zimbabwe guy could really comment? I mean, he was more a pundit than a commentator, wasn’t he?
Jonathan: I don’t know. Nothing’s impossible. So far be it for me to judge how he does it.
Peter: I’m like being one of those sighted people now saying he couldn’t do it. But I got fairly close to it, I reckon. So you know, maybe he could, but it wouldn’t be easy to do it. [laughs]
Jonathan: I’m sure that you have no idea what impact you had, the fact that you have done what you’ve done on a kid on the other side of the world. But to talk to you today and have a chat about all manner of things has been a great honor, and I really appreciate it. Thank you for coming on the show.
Peter: Well, I know how much you’ve done to inspire people and to spread information, which of course is the key. So you’ve done that, and I was delighted to come on. It’s been really good to talk to you, Jonathan.
Jonathan: Thank you!
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Hannah Mae Aldeza and Derek Lane Say Farewell
And as we near the end of this final episode of Living Blindfully, we must get some people on who have played such an integral part in the show since it’s become Living Blindfully back in April of last year.
So in order of, oh, I don’t know what order. Anyway, we’re going to introduce Hannah first of all. It’s Hannah the Transcribing Banana.
Hi, Hannah.
Hannah: Hello!
Jonathan: It’s great to hear your voice because so many people have read your transcriptions. So we have Hannah, the Transcribing Banana.
And then, we have Derek Lane is in my ears and in my email. Derek Lane is in my… Welcome to you, Derek.
Derek: [laughs] Hey, you’ve done variants of that joke for ages.
Jonathan: I know. I need to get off the podcasting circuit because I’m just recycling my old jokes.
Derek: And now, people are going to blame me for the end of this. I get it. I see where this is going.
Jonathan: Yeah.
Have you guys met each other before? Have you communicated on social media or anything like that?
Hannah: Not really. This is our first time to meet, so nice to meet you, Derek. [laughs]
Derek: [laughs] Nice to meet you.
Jonathan: So maybe you guys can talk about what it’s like being on the receiving ends of things that you have to edit or transcribe. Can I start with you, Derek? And I’m going to take a guess that I think the favorite thing of Living Blindfully you’ve edited would be the Deane Blazie interview. Am I right?
Derek: Yes, that was so much fun.
Jonathan: You put a bit of finesse into it.
Derek: I did. And CleanFeed killed, or not CleanFeed. Then, oh my God! What’s the thing that just left my brain that does the podcasts that you use? The service that does the cleanup and the balancing.
Hannah: Auphonic?
Jonathan: Auphonic.
Derek: Auphonic, yes. Auphonic actually broke a lot of what I did. It made it all go away. Because I was putting different hums, and beeps, and various quirks that could happen with some of the material recorded at the time. I spent a great deal of time emulating that, and Auphonic cleaned it right up. [laughs[
Jonathan: But this is one of the things about Living Blindfully that people may not know. So when I put the episode out, somebody said to me, actually, what they picked up on was that the Dectalk speech that Deane was demonstrating wasn’t coming through. It was just like they weren’t hearing it at all.
And I thought ah, Auphonic is being way aggressive.
So I was on holiday somewhere. I was not in easy internet connectivity. I had, I think, cellular connectivity.
I got the raw data, which I always carry with me on my laptop for these sorts of emergencies, on my ThinkPad.
I went back and I resubmitted it to Auphonic, and I kept the leveling, but I turned off all the other processing, and I republished the episode specifically because of that. So I fixed it for you, Derek.
Derek: And I never got the fixed one.
Jonathan: Well, you should get it. Download it now. The fixed one’s there.
Derek: Well actually, I don’t need to. I had the thing before.
Jonathan: [laughs]
What about you, Hannah? What’s the favorite thing that… I mean, I must say, I have so much admiration for you because sitting there and editing, it’s one thing. It’s a relatively short thing to do compared with Transcribing the whole thing. But what’s your favorite episode that you’ve transcribed?
Hannah: I’m gonna really sound showbiz and say I love all the episodes… [laughs]
Jonathan: [laughs]
Hannah: especially the ones with the Tutorials. Oh, okay, I love the H1, H4, and H6 Essentials episodes because I can just listen to it and, you know, get my own stuff and edit and transcribe it.
Jonathan: Killing 2 birds with one stone.
And one of the things that I think has really helped, I mean, I wanted Living Blindfully to be working with blind content modifiers of all kinds so that we kept it all blind. But I think one of the things that’s really helped with our transcripts since you took them on is that because you know the products and some of the weirder terminology that we might use, it has just made the transcription so much more accurate.
Hannah: I still consult the good old Google sometimes.
Jonathan: Yeah. [laughs]
Hannah: But yes.
Jonathan: So what do you do to transcribe? Like what tools have you been using?
Hannah: Right now, I’m using ExpressScribe to listen to the podcast. I turn it up a bit, kind of like 1.5x so that I can transcribe/edit the episodes a bit more quickly.
Jonathan: And you have like a foot pedal where you can stop and start without…
Hannah: I have a foot pedal, yes, …
Jonathan: Yeah, that’s cool.
Hannah: While I’m typing and editing. And I recently got a mechanical keyboard. So that makes it all clickety-click.
Jonathan: Oh, such a satisfying feeling when you’re typing on those.
Hannah: Yes.
Jonathan: What about you, Derek? What tools of the trade have you employed? Because there’ll be a lot of people listening who are into audio production. We both use Reaper, so we can send each other little Reaper bits. But what are the tricks of the trade for doing stuff like this?
Derek: Well, I use Reaper, and I use iZotope RX for some of the noise reduction.
I recently stumbled on this plugin though, called DXRevive Pro. That’s the full name of the plugin. And it’s miraculous because in real time, it has different models to kind of resynthesize frequencies that don’t actually exist in the recording.
So to a point, if it can kind of get an idea of what’s there, you could take someone on a really low quality headset and Move them into a space that sounds much better.
Jonathan: Hmm.
Derek: And then, some plugins on the back end to kind of make that sound a little less exaggerated because it does tend to over exaggerate what it does. And you’ve got some pretty cool audio.
Jonathan: Yeah, it’s amazing what’s going down the pipe with this stuff.
One of the things I’ve been playing with lately is the Adobe Podcast tools. And I don’t know if you’ve seen those, but they can take some incredibly subpar audio and turn it into something quite useful. Sometimes, it’s a bit overaggressive. And if you pay for the Pro version, you can tweak it. But it really is quite cool what it does.
Derek: I haven’t really gotten a chance to use those because I’m afraid that if I do, I’m going to let all of my semi-adult responsibilities go because I’ll just have so many more toys to screw with, and I’ll be more engaged in playing with the things to do my work, as opposed to doing the work so that I can then play with things.
Jonathan: Yeah.
Now Hannah, you’re talking to us from the Philippines. What kind of services exist in the Philippines, and what kind of access to, say, assistive technology is there?
We had the chief technical officer from NV Access on earlier in the episode. And it seems to me that NVDA must be a huge benefit to many blind people in the Philippines.
Hannah: Oh, yes. You’re right about that, Jonathan. There are lots of blind people who use NVDA, and they don’t have to do all kinds of things to access other screen readers.
But when it comes to support, sadly, there Isn’t much. We’re not getting benefits so either you work, or your family supports you. You have to have something, one of those. Because if you don’t, yeah, you’re a bit screwed.
Jonathan: We know that the call center industry is pretty big in the Philippines. At least certainly, that’s what we notice here. When we call a lot of companies here in New Zealand, we talk to nice people from the Philippines who are handling the calls. Is that an industry that blind people can easily get into there, or are there accessibility challenges that often make that difficult?
Hannah: The Philippine call centers, recently, they’re more accommodating. Like I worked for 2 call centers that made me bring my Braille display to the office. My own, because, you know, it’s really expensive and they wouldn’t buy it. But they installed JAWS in my computers, and they gave me a laptop, things like that. So they’re very nice. The one call center installed NVDA.
It really just depends on the tools that they’re using and how accessible it is. If NVDA doesn’t work, we use JAWS, and they buy it.
Jonathan: Is there a blindness agency as such providing orientation and mobility, rehab service, that kind of stuff?
Hannah: There’s one or two, but they don’t provide training like blindness skills training, like cooking and traveling. Okay, they teach basic mobility skills. Skills like cane travel, and following your shoreline and things, but not listening to traffic and crossing the streets. So yeah, we still have a lot to happen for us.
Jonathan: Yeah.
And Derek, you’re full-time working in the audio production industry, right? I mean, you’ve really carved out a bit of a niche for yourself. You’re doing live work, and you’re doing a bit of podcast editing of other podcasts as well. So you’re keeping busy.
Derek: Yeah, I admittedly am between podcasts.
Well, there is some work that I’m doing with a guy named Mike May. Some of you guys have heard of him.
And if you haven’t, you should, because he’s a brilliant guy. He has traveled the world many times, totally blind. He’s gained and lost his sight a couple of times. And he’s just got a fascinating life story. And he’s been recording bits of his travels since, I think, the late 70s. I know I’ve got stuff going back to the 80s and 90s that he’s given. And clips like that are going to be in his podcasts. And so we’re really working together on making that shine.
So when he’s ready to talk about that, wherever he’s ready to talk about it, that’s going to be great content for this, and other communities.
Jonathan: Wow! Yeah, I’m sure that’ll be great. And you know what? I don’t know if he’s come up with a name yet, but if I was naming that podcast, I’d call it You May Have Heard of Me.
Derek: Yeah, you do need to get off the podcasting scene for the jokes.
Jonathan: [laughs] Mike May be on the podcast circuit soon.
Derek: I hope so. I hope so.
I’m doing some music production stuff, too, some mixing. And that’s fun. And mastering. I like putting polish on things, kind of shining them up. I find that very fascinating.
And I’m not going to ramble about that per se. Just to say that for anyone who is aspiring to mix or master and you think you have to have very expensive equipment to do that, what you need to have is familiarity with the equipment that you already have. If you know what something sounds like on the devices that you own, get the material you’re working on to have that same sound. Because if you do, chances are it will translate to other devices.
Jonathan: Makes sense. I mean, it’s a lot of work to do that, but it makes sense.
Derek: But I mean, if you want it badly enough, if you’re hungry enough, you will make what you have work, and you will pull in the people to help you do that.
Jonathan: Yeah.
So are either of you looking for, now that Living Blindfully is winding up today, additional work in your respective fields? Because if you are, I’m very happy to give you a platform to let people know what you’re interested in doing, and how they can get in touch with you.
Hannah: Well, thanks for that, Jonathan. Yes, I’m looking for a, right now, a customer service or a technical support job, or some more transcription. You know, if you have funds, and you want your podcast to be more accessible, I am here.
Jonathan: Yes.
Hannah: You can contact me to talk about it.
Jonathan: Yeah.
Hannah: I am on Mastodon. My Mastodon name is HMaeAldeza@DragonsCave.space.
Jonathan: Right.
Hannah: I thought for a second. It’s H-M-A-E-A-L-D-E-Z-A@DragonsCave.space.
Derek: And I will also join Hannah in just giving my Mastodon info as well. Derek@HKC.social. Will see you on my Mastodon. That’s D-E-R-E-K@H-K-C.social.
Jonathan: As we wrap this up, I just want to say how honored I have been to work with both of you absolute professionals, brilliant people to work with. And when I’ve asked for prompt turnaround of either audio or transcripts for some special reason, I know you’ve always pulled out the stops, both of you, to deliver. And it’s just been a happy time. I’ve really enjoyed this.
So would you like to share some final thoughts before we go, Hannah?
Hannah: Okay. First of all, I am so happy to have transcribed the Living Blindfully episodes and make sure that it’s accessible for everyone to read, whether you’re deaf-blind, or just, you know, don’t have time to listen to the podcast for some reason. And I am so happy, and honored, and privileged to have done this on Living Blindfully, and worked with you, Jonathan. Thanks for the opportunity.
I hope that everyone enjoys the transcripts.
Jonathan: I know I get so much feedback on them, and how much people value them, so thank you so much for the outstanding work that you have done.
And over to you, Derek.
Derek: Well, I just want to thank you and all the other listeners, because you have all played a part in giving Jonathan the audio that I’ve edited and that Hannah has transcribed. [laughs]
And I would just encourage all of us, as a community, to still exist and to find places where we can share the insights where we would normally share them on Living Blindfully, we find somewhere else for them to go. We don’t have to stop delivering information to each other. We just need to find a place that we can put all this info that’s still out there.
Jonathan: Absolutely. Things have a habit of emerging where there’s a need.
Thank you both so much for this, for your efforts on the podcast. I’m looking forward to staying in touch, and I really appreciate all that you’ve both done, so thank you.
Hannah: Thank you!
Derek: Welcome!
The Bonnie Bye Bye
[Bonnie Bulletin music]
Jonathan: And as we near the end of this final Living Blindfully episode, one thing I have learned over the years is that it’s always a good idea to give Bonnie, well, almost the last word. Almost the last word.
Bonnie: [laughs]
Jonathan: Welcome back! It’s been a while since you’ve been on.
Bonnie: It has been a while, because Living Blindfully has been so busy with all the amazing guests that there hasn’t been any time.
Jonathan: Last time you were on was when we did our little travel log of the NFB convention. And now, here you are, talking to a newly minted person working with the National Federation of the Blind.
Bonnie: I know.
Jonathan: I mean, who’d have thought it? It’s amazing.
Bonnie: It is. It seems like that was a long time ago, that trip.
Jonathan: It was, really. A lot has happened in a couple of months, a lot of different things.
Bonnie: Yeah, a lot of stuff.
Jonathan: Any final thoughts on this last episode of Living Blindfully from you?
Bonnie: Well, I think I know that the listeners have really enjoyed Living Blindfully over the past few years, and it has been your baby, and you have built it into a global phenomena, basically. And it’s hard to move on from that. And I know you’ve struggled a bit with it because it’s something that you have created. It’s your personal brand, and it’s hard to give it up.
But I also look at it as a new chapter as well, that you’ll be doing other great things for the good of the blind community around the world. So it’s not saying goodbye to something because it’ll still be there in the archives forever, but it’s taking it in a different route, taking a different path.
Jonathan: You will attest to how I’ve been cosseted down here, how long each episode of Living Blindfully takes to hatch.
Bonnie: It takes a lot of work, yeah.
Jonathan: So you never know, you might get sick of me hovering around without Living Blindfully to do.
Bonnie: Maybe. [laughs]
Now, I’m sure you will be busy doing NFB things and all kinds of other things.
Jonathan: I have got to tell you that in the short time I’ve been working with NFB, I thought to myself, man, I’m more busy now, more frenetic, and doing more things than I was when I was a CEO.
But it’s exciting, and every day is so different. Sometimes, you get to talk to emerging leaders and teachers. And other times, you look at new technology, or you’re working with people in mainstream tech companies that we need to talk to. Just such a wide and varied range of engagement. It’s amazing.
Bonnie: And I think, you know, that’s the thing from Living Blindfully, because you’ve built up this global respect, and you’re not an unknown entity going into these places.
Now, they might feel freer to talk to you now because you’re not going to put it on a podcast. [laughs]
Jonathan: Yeah, that has come up.
Bonnie: Yeah. So, you know, that’s a good thing.
And I know it’s sad to see it go. But also, it frees you to do all kinds of things that you maybe couldn’t have done before in a different way. Even though you’re still doing the same thing, you’re doing it differently.
And people have been very gracious, you know. I mean obviously, they’re sad to see it go, but they’ve been congratulatory in your new role, which is good. I mean, some people don’t know what they’re going to do on a Saturday now, but I’m sure they’ll find something. [laughs]
Jonathan: Yeah, I do appreciate how gracious people have been.
So there’s lots of interesting times ahead.
Bonnie: Yeah, it is.
Jonathan: And what’s even cooler is that I am just so thrilled to have you on that journey with me.
Bonnie: Aww! I’m very proud of you.
Jonathan: You’re my good luck charm, that’s what you are. [laughs]
Bonnie: And I think some folks may not know, they’ve been listening to the show for many years now, and I wanted to pay tribute to a member of the family who did pass away a few weeks ago, Lizzie, my retired Seeing Eye dog at age 16 and a half.
Jonathan: She was a grand old lady.
Bonnie: A grand old lady.
Jonathan: And in the spirit of peace and love, Lizzie went to live with my ex-wife.
Well actually, what happened was that Nicola, my youngest daughter, was desperate for a puppy. And my ex-wife was not a big fan of that idea, having an untrained puppy. But my ex-wife did entertain the idea.
And this is Amanda, who’s been on the show, actually. She gave a great discussion about whether there’s a blind culture, or not. It was a very good discussion.
She did agree that when you were ready to retire Lizzie, that Lizzie could come to live with them.
And I’ll never forget how at Christmastime, we gave Nicola, all wrapped up like a Christmas present, a dog collar with a note from Lizzie. And she burst into tears. She was so happy.
Bonnie: Yeah.
Jonathan: And Lizzie lived a great life in retirement.
Bonnie: She did. She had a great retirement.
Her quality of life, sadly, had gone down. She was 16 and a half years old.
And so she passed away. They buried her in her bed with her tinkerbell blanket under a tree, so I thought that was really…
Jonathan: It’s a beautiful, peaceful spot.
Bonnie: Yeah.
Jonathan: It’s really hard when they go, isn’t it? No matter how long, it’s very very hard
Bonnie: It’s terrible, yeah.
My boss, they had to put their cat down yesterday. It’s really horrible.
But she had a good life. She was an incredible dog. And she lived a long time. I think of all my girls, she’s lived the longest.
So yeah. I just wanted to say that I’m very proud of you. I know that you’re going to be doing great things.
Jonathan: No pressure.
Bonnie: And looking forward to the journey that it’s going to take us on. Very exciting!
Jonathan: Very good.
Well, thank you for coming on the show, and for all your support of Living Blindfully over the years.
I know that people have wished we had a few more Bonnie Bulletins. But you see, they were so vociferous in their contributions. It’s difficult. [laughs]
Bonnie: Yeah. [laughs]
Jonathan: Alright. Thank you so much!
Bonnie: Thank you!
[music]
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Final Thoughts and Farewell
And that really is just about it. The guests are gone. The vaults are now empty. It’s just you and me. And all that remains for me to do is perform the bittersweet task of saying goodbye from Living Blindfully.
Living Blindfully was, of course, rebranded from Mosen at Large back in 2023. And although I didn’t intend for it to be this way, it turns out that this podcast started just over 5 years ago, was really a continuation of The BlindSide which I started back in 2016, and which I discontinued when I joined Aira due to the extent of travel I was doing at that time. So apart from a short gap, I’ve been doing podcasts like this for 8 years now.
And it has been a great run. With play counts well into 7 figures and listeners in 113 countries, the show grew beyond anything I could have dreamed of.
And it’s ending on a high, with listener numbers increasing steadily, and the show gaining increasing recognition.
The global community we’ve built around the show has been very special, unique, in fact, and I thank you for being a part of it.
You know, I talk to a lot of podcasters. Some of them are blind, and some of them are not. And it’s common to hear podcasters say, “I publish an episode, and I never hear anything back. I see from the stats that people are out there, they’re listening, but I never hear from anybody.”
Well, thanks to our engaged community, I’ve never had that problem. And in fact, I spoke several years ago at one of those big international podcasting conferences about how and why engagement is so consistent and substantial on this show.
There are many things about the show that I’m proud of. I’m proud that we’ve discussed some of the deeper philosophical and existential questions of blindness. They are not often discussed on podcasts.
What is reasonable for us to expect when it comes to our place in society?
In a blindness context, what constitutes literacy?
We’ve recognized our history of overcoming low expectations, and celebrated a history of blind people leading and triumphing in all walks of life.
We’ve discussed how we make it possible for more people to have the opportunity to live the lives they want, and make their contribution to society in a way that maximizes their potential.
We’ve even tackled the contentious topic of blindness and organized religion, and the dangers of people who think it’s necessary to cure us.
We’ve discussed a range of perspectives on whether we’d take sight if it were offered to us later in life.
We discussed ableist language. Remember all those discussions?, and the harm that is caused by using the word blind to be synonymous with ignorant, inept, or biased. I hope our Living Blindfully family will continue to call that out.
We talked about mainstreaming versus attending schools for the blind.
We debated whether people-first language when describing blind people is a good thing or not.
We loudly and proudly champion the need for more blind people to be leading the organizations in the sector, and that a blind person choosing a vocation allowing you to be of service to other blind people is a noble thing to aspire to, not a sellout.
I’m proud that more people now understand the importance of spelling Braille with a capital B, and hope that we will see more Braille authorities around the world adopting an official policy to do so, just as New Zealand has done. I should also add that spelling Braille with a capital B is in the National Federation of the Blind’s style guide. One of many reasons I’m loving my work with them.
I consider it one of the most important legacies of this podcast that you now hear a lot more people talking about being proud to be blind. So embrace it, proclaim it at every opportunity.
We’ve covered the pros and cons of working with a white cane, working with a dog, and compared notes on guide dog rideshare refusals.
We’ve discussed common misconceptions sighted people have of us, and what it’s like to date as a blind person.
We talked blind parenting, and some of the discrimination blind parents might face.
We even tackled the difficult, harrowing subject of abuse at schools for the blind.
We debated when and how to disclose your blindness to a potential employer.
We covered Russia’s invasion of Ukraine from a blindness perspective, and solicited your support for the We’re With You concert for Ukraine, where blind musicians put on a stellar series of performances that raised over $100,000.
In a polarized and increasingly intolerant world, we’ve been able to have these discussions with respect, and disagree without being disagreeable.
On the tech side, and there has, of course, been plenty of tech discussion, we discussed the pros and cons of proprietary devices like Notetakers and the Victor Reader Stream and mainstream solutions.
We taught you how to use Markdown, which can be used to write beautifully formatted documents with a few simple commands.
We covered the importance of good password hygiene and demonstrated the powerful cross-platform 1Password app.
We’ve done plenty of audio geekery with plenty of reviews of Zoom recorders, audio production tools, and audio interfaces.
We’ve brought you coverage of the big Apple events such as WWDC and those announcing new iPhone hardware, complete with Heidi Taylor’s legendary description.
Have I told you lately how proud I am, not just of Heidi, but all my amazing kids? They are brilliant young people.
We’ve conducted some adventures in Android and presented a comprehensive series on the Chromebook and ChromeVox.
We reviewed various TVs including from Samsung and Sony.
We loved to reminisce about old technology – from old talking clocks, to VersaBraille, Apple IIe, and BrailleEdit.
We covered some cool innovations from Sonos, and some serious regressions from Sonos.
We even unboxed one of their competitor’s speakers from Bose.
Some of us were excited by the prospect of self-driving cars. Others were freaked.
We campaigned, when necessary, for equal treatment in tech, including calling out when Apple released a beta of WatchOS where VoiceOver was completely broken, launching a petition that was widely supported. Now, it had its critics too, but blind people are worthy. We should never be completely locked out of anything. And that’s been at the core of what Living Blindfully has stood for.
Even though I personally don’t use a Victor Reader Stream, we campaigned successfully for Amazon to prioritize the adding of Audible to the Victor Reader Stream 3, and for fairness for Voice Dream Reader customers when they attempted to violate Apple’s App Store guidelines.
We geeked out with demonstrations of routers including Ubiquiti equipment.
We embraced and explained the benefits of the Fediverse, particularly Mastodon, after Elon Musk took over Twitter, fired the entire accessibility team, cut off access to the third-party apps so many of us depend on, and turned it into a cesspool. The Fediverse, by the way, is the future, and I am delighted that if the administrator of your Mastodon instance allows it, you can now follow Threads users who opt in on Mastodon.
We saw the emergence of the blindness wearables market, and wearables adopted by blind people including the Envision smart glasses and, of course, those Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses.
I’ve always been conscious whenever we talked technology on Living Blindfully, that there are people who find all of this tech stuff incredibly intuitive and just want every single bit of information they can get their hands on. But we also have listeners who understand the promise of this technology, what it should be able to do for them, but find it frustrating and bamboozling. And we’ve tried to talk to them, too.
We kept each other company, and helped each other through the height of the COVID lockdowns.
We shared health hacks like the benefits of meditation, and living a ketogenic life.
We’ve conducted comprehensive reviews of hardware and software so the community has a resource to turn to when it comes to learning about them. They include the Ulysses word processor for iOS, the powerful Drafts app, Backpack Studio, the amazing Castro podcast app, which was brilliant, went on life support, and then came storming back to life. It is now in excellent hands. And if you’re looking for a good quality podcast app for iOS, check Castro out. It’s worth it.
We looked at Walter 2 for transferring content from your computer to your iPhone.
We helped you manage your calendar more effectively with the Fantastical app, build a powerful task management system with Todoist, and record your thoughts with Day One Journal.
We talked video doorbells, including those from Ring and Nest.
We demonstrated the power of RSS with the Lire RSS Reader.
We provided an extensive tutorial on the Mantis Q40, the Braille display with a QWERTY keyboard.
We labelled clothing, household items and more using Way Around tags.
We showed off the power, ease of use, and elegance of the Amazon Fire TV stick.
Remember Clubhouse? We were the first to give you a comprehensive tutorial on how to sign up and how to participate.
Our transcripts made it viable for the deaf-blind community to engage with the show, and we’ve talked plenty about hearing technology and how to forge an effective partnership with your audiologist.
We introduced you to HeardThat, which is a cost-effective way for people to enhance their hearing with the aid of just a smartphone and their optional microphone accessory kit.
We covered the emergence of accessibility overlays, giving both sides of the argument the chance to convince you of their positions.
AI entered a new phase. We were the first to bring you a demo of Be My AI, and we showcased personal voice cloning with ElevenLabs, and generating music through Suno AI.
We watched the development, and finally the release of the Monarch Multiline tactile device.
We covered the BlindShell Classic for those who don’t want a phone with a touchscreen, but want a phone with smarts.
And of course, whenever anyone refers to the Amazon Echo as the Soup Drinker, you know you’ve found a fellow Living Blindfully listener.
It has been my honor to talk with many of the movers and shakers, dreamers, thinkers and authors. When thinking about what to ask, I’ve always asked myself what questions would my listeners like me to ask? I’ve been mindful I have been in a privileged position to talk to these people, and I felt like I was your ambassador. I have aimed to be respectful, but challenging.
And that’s just a snapshot of the legacy this podcast leaves. I’m proud of it. I’m incredibly grateful for it.
Now, the important thank yous and the inevitable fear that I’ve left somebody important out. And if I have, it’s not intentional.
Matt Baster at Pinecast, the service that has distributed this podcast since around episode 49, I believe it is, has been incredible. He cares about his customers, and he takes accessibility seriously. If you want to get into podcasting, or maybe you’re podcasting already and you’re looking for a top-notch accessible place to switch your podcast hosting to, you can’t go wrong with Pinecast. Thank you so much, Matt, for everything. I’ve enjoyed geeking out with you.
To our voices, Michael Marshall who did voice work for us during the Mosen at Large era, and Mike Moran who allowed me to make an ElevenLabs clone of his voice so I could spin messages up whenever I needed to, I appreciate you both.
To our Living Blindfully plus subscribers who numbered far more and who gave far more than I budgeted for, your support has meant the world to me. In a world where there is so much choice, I am truly honored and humbled that so many of you thought this podcast was worth supporting financially. Many of our plus subscribers not only supported the show with their dollars, but also their incredible, kind words of encouragement.
Thanks to all our sponsors. We’ve formed some great partnerships over the years, and I’m delighted that so many of you have had such a strong, positive reaction from our Living Blindfully family.
To all of you who have listened and written or called into the show, you can feel proud of the great conversation we have had. My sincere thanks.
I have, of course, already thanked them, but I do want to mention in this section as well Hannah Mae Aldeza who has done some tremendous work with the transcripts, and also Derek Lane who has done some audio editing for us over the last year and a half or so.
And my final thanks goes to someone who has made a lot of sacrifices for Living Blindfully without a single complaint. Each episode of Living Blindfully has taken many hours to produce. Coming up with 2 hours of content of broadcast quality every week is a big undertaking. A good podcast should sound like it’s effortless. But in reality, be anything but. A podcast that respects your time will be carefully edited and trimmed. Bonnie has never complained, never resented all the time I’ve spent here in the studio carefully crafting every episode. Thank you, my love, for your understanding, for your unwavering support, and for the times when you’ve diplomatically reminded me that it might be time I stopped for a while to eat something.
This podcast feed will remain in place at least for some months yet, so you can download any episodes you want to keep, either using a podcast app or by going to the website LivingBlindfully.com.
Let’s keep in touch. I don’t know when any new podcasting initiative in my new role at the National Federation of the Blind might begin. But if you stay subscribed to the Living Blindfully feed, it may be that we can include the first episode in this feed so you know where to subscribe for future episodes. For a similar reason, if you’re subscribed to the Living Blindfully announcements list, you might like to stay subscribed so you can get the word as soon as possible.
Mushroom FM, well, that’s not going anywhere, and I’ll continue to host the Mosen Explosion every weekday at 2 AM Eastern Time, and it’s repeated at 2 PM Eastern Time. It’s a music show. It’s also a lot of fun, and I’d love it if you stopped by and became a regular listener.
I’ll continue to hang out on Mastodon predominantly. I passionately believe in social media controlled by the people in a way that ensures no single billionaire can ruin it, and in a way that no algorithm can poison the public discourse. Mastodon and the Fediverse projects are important for us to support.
Since Living Blindfully is closing, the Living Blindfully Mastodon instance will be closing, too. But I’ve set up a new one, and it’s called CaneAndAble.social. That’s C-A-N-EAndA-B-L-E.social.
When people talk to me about Mastodon, the one thing that really still does confuse people is which instance should I join? And what I say to them is, it’s a little bit like an email provider. If you join Outlook.com or Gmail.com, you can still email everybody else. It’s not like people on Gmail can only email people on Gmail, or people on Outlook can only email people on Outlook. And Mastodon is like that. If you pick an instance that you like because of who runs it or the rules they have, then you can still communicate with everybody else who is not using that instance.
So if you have been holding off on joining Mastodon and or you want to be part of a Mastodon instance that’s all about people who are proud to be blind and living a blindful life, then you are welcome to apply to join CaneAndAble.social. We’ve opened it up now for registrations. But be warned. If you don’t read the rules, you won’t know how to apply successfully, so you need to read the rules all the way through. We want to run a community that’s not too much hassle, and that comprises people who will follow instructions and be constructive participants on social media.
And if you are on Mastodon and contemplating a change to CaneAndAble.social, one big incentive is since I love to talk, we’ve got a 10,000 character limit on each post, and I may well increase that further.
So to sign up, just go in your web browser to CaneAndAble.social, click on the link to sign up, and follow the instructions, reading those rules.
Then, if you have an iPhone, go back to episode 227 of Living Blindfully. There’s a comprehensive tutorial on the Mona Mastodon app, which is a great social media experience for your iPhone. It also works on the Mac, and it’s very accessible.
I look forward to staying in touch, particularly on Mastodon.
And in the fullness of time, good things are coming in the podcast technology space. I can promise you that.
That’s it from Living Blindfully. Thank you!
And remember that when you’re out there with your guide dog, you’ve harnessed success. And with your cane, you’re able.
[music]