In Touch

In Touch episodes:

• 05.28.2024

  Accessibility of Ticketmaster and Sonos Speakers

  Technology often supports blind and visually impaired people to achieve independence. However, the process can also work in reverse - hindering rather than helping. We speak to listeners about their experience of booking to see their favourite acts using...

  
• 05.21.2024

  The UK's First Blind Overseas Ambassador; Travelling Tips & Tricks

  Victoria Harrison is the UK's first totally blind ambassador to be posted overseas. In August she will take up the role as Ambassador to the Republic of Slovenia, and will be accompanied by her guide dog Otto. Victoria tells Peter...

  
• 05.14.2024

  Travelling Abroad

  Hayley Kennedy, Amar Latif and Dawn Hopper are all experienced visually impaired travellers and we have brought them together to discuss the positives and pitfalls of travelling around the world when visually impaired. We discuss booking airport assistance, getting your...

  
• 05.07.2024

  Sleep

  What is non-24-hour sleep-wake disorder? It is a condition that impacts the natural body clock, thus affecting sleep, and can be triggered by a lack of or no light perception. Tina Snow got in touch after having suffered with this...

  
• 04.30.2024

  Redundancies at Guide Dogs; Voting Equipment

  As the charity Guide Dogs looked into its own future, they have predicted some financial hardship due to rising costs. Similarly to many organisations within the charity sector, they are having to come up with ways of cutting costs in...

  
• 04.23.2024

  Improvements to the Disabled Students' Allowance

  The Disabled Students' Allowance enables students to get help with specialist equipment and in-person support, but over the years we've heard about persistent complications and delays. The system is operated by the Student Loans Company and they have now introduced...

  
• 04.16.2024

  Audio Description: New Ofcom Guidelines & Application in the Theatre

  The communications regulator Ofcom has just made changes to its guidelines surrounding audio description provided by television and on-demand services. For the first time, there will be unique recommendations for on-demand providers. Helen Shaw is part of Ofcom's content policy...

  
• 04.09.2024

  Hotel Stays with a Guide Dog; The Great Escape

  A new hotel in London, that belongs to a big-name franchise, initially declared on their website that service dogs are not welcome. Dave and Karen Cloherty were left in shock when they came to book a room for them and...

  
• 04.02.2024

  Should Blindness be Front and Centre?

  In Touch discusses whether your blindness should be at the front and centre of your life. Perhaps an ambiguous question because it can depend on the environment you're in, the company that you share, whether you need help and many...

  
• 03.26.2024

  26/03/2024

  News, views and information for people who are blind or partially sighted

  
• 03.19.2024

  The State of Vision Rehabilitation Services

  Vision Rehabilitation is an essential service to newly blind or partially sighted people, and those whose sight has changed. It is a service that is provided by local councils and can help with things like technology, daily mobility and independent...

  
• 03.12.2024

  The Impacts of an Inactive Government - Northern Ireland

  The Northern Ireland Assembly, the country's devolved legislature, have recently reformed after years of political stalemate. In Touch investigates the issues that arose during the Assembly's years of inactivity and that will have potential long-term impacts for visually impaired people....

  
• 03.05.2024

  RNIB Tech for Life Fair - Belfast

  Northern Ireland recently hosted its first major assistive technology conference. The conference was hosted by the RNIB at the Europa Hotel in Belfast and it was home for the day to all the big players in the assistive technology arena....

  
• 02.27.2024

  Voting Requirements; Smart Energy; Visual Snow

  2024 promises to be hugely significant for political change around the world, with more than eighty countries planning to head to the polls. The UK being one of them. This year will see not only a general election, but local...

  
• 02.23.2024

  Blind Baseball and Morris Dancing

  Tonight's edition challenges any idea that there are limits to the ways in which visually impaired people can have fun! Shiraz Cohan is the founder of the UK Blind Baseball Association. He joins us with Lancashire Lions team mate...

  
• 02.20.2024

  Mixmups

  Mixmups is a new children's TV show that aims to integrate disability into everyday adventures and children's play. The show was created by Rebecca Atkinson, who has duel sensory loss, when she realised the lack of representation in children's toys....

  
• 02.13.2024

  YouGov Poll on Employment

  A recent YouGov poll, commissioned by the All Party Parliamentary Group on Eye Health and Visual Impairment, has found that many employers do not have inclusive employment practices. This may not come as a surprise to many blind and partially...

  
• 02.06.2024

  Blind baseball and morris dancing

  Can blind people play baseball or be morris dancers? Of course they can!

  
• 01.30.2024

  Local sight loss charities; Doctor Who

  Local sight loss charities exist throughout the UK to provide practical and emotional support to blind and visually impaired people. We wanted to learn more about the services they offer and the challenges they face. Fiona Sandford is the CEO...

  
• 01.23.2024

  Accessible smart meters, A blast from the past!

  Accessible In Home Displays (AIHDs) work with Smart Meters so that blind and visually impaired people can more easily monitor their use of energy. Their features include large buttons, high contrast displays and text to speech functions. Around...

  
• 01.16.2024

  Representation in Parliament

  With a general election a certainty at some point this year, two recent developments have alarmed organisations representing disabled people. Before 2020, there was a fund that provided financial aid to disabled people running for elective office, but that fund...

  
• 01.09.2024

  Pavement Parking

  The Transport (Scotland) Act has been in place since 2019, which includes a nation-wide ban of parking cars on pavements. But only in December 2023 were local councils across Scotland given the powers to enforce fines of up to £100...

  
• 01.02.2024

  The New CEO of Guide Dogs; Cars

  Andrew Lennox took over as the CEO of The Guide Dogs for the Blind Association in September 2023. We thought we'd give him a little time to get his feet under the table but now he joins us to describe...

  
• 12.26.2023

  The Blind Chocolatier

  Stuart Hann is The Blind Chocolatier and he has a small shop in the Lake District. Stuart worked as a pastry Chef before he was diagnosed with Leber's Hereditary Optic Neuropathy in 2015. It is a rare eye condition...

  
• 12.19.2023

  Christmas Time at New College Worcester

  Peter White pays a visit to the school that he used to attend, now called New College Worcester, to find out how some of the current pupils are preparing for Christmas. They tell him about what is happening at the...

  
• 12.12.2023

  The Eyes Have It

  Ophthalmology is the busiest outpatient speciality in the NHS, with 8 million attendances in England in the last two years. However, there is a crisis of capacity and many patients are not receiving the specialist treatment that they need to...

  
• 12.05.2023

  Look UK's Mentoring Project

  When you have a visual impairment, it can be very valuable for your own wellbeing to connect with other visually impaired people and share tips and advice on life. And when you are a young person with a visual impairment,...

  
• 11.28.2023

  Scotland's Train Ticket Offices; Awards for Service

  A few weeks ago, many In Touch listeners would have given a huge sigh of relief when it was announced that the plans to close ticketing offices at England's train stations had been revised. That got us thinking about what...

  
• 11.21.2023

  AbilityNet Tech Conference; Love on the Run

  AbilityNet TechShare Pro was a technology conference that happened last week, hosted by HSBC and organised by the charity AbilityNet. AbilityNet's ambition is to get more disabled people involved with technology. The conference brought together some of the biggest names...

  
• 11.15.2023

  All The Light We Cannot See

  Anthony Doerr's 2014 war novel All The Light We Cannot See has been adapted into a four-part TV series on Netflix. The story is based in Nazi-occupied France during World War Two, and revolves around a blind character called Marie-Laure...

  
• 11.07.2023

  How Accessible is X?

  Social media can be a good way for visually impaired people to connect with their community, but some recent changes to X (previously named Twitter), may have made that difficult for some visually impaired people. With the helping hand of...

  
• 10.31.2023

  U-Turn on Rail Ticket Office Closures

  The government's plans to close hundreds of train ticket offices in England have been cancelled. Since the plans were announced, we here at In Touch have been discussing the implications of the proposed closures for blind and partially sighted people....

  
• 10.25.2023

  Living Through War

  We hear from two blind women about their experiences of living through the current conflict in Palestine and Israel. Dalal Al-Taji lives in Khan Yunis in the south of the Gaza Strip and Heather Stone lives in the northern area...

  
• 10.17.2023

  Blinded in Ukraine; Forza Motorsport

  Vlad and Valeria Yeschenko are a young newly-wed Ukrainian couple. Vlad was clearing out and dismantling mines when one exploded, resulting in severe injuries, including the loss of his eyesight. The couple got married soon after Vlad's recovery. The BBC's...

  
• 10.10.2023

  Izabela in the Forest; Can Blind People do That?

  Izabela Dłużyk is a blind female sound recordist from Poland. She tells Peter about her passion for sound recording, bird song and one of the last primeval forests in Europe, the Białowieża. She was recently the subject of a documentary...

  
• 10.03.2023

  Learning Languages

  We discuss techniques for learning languages when you are visually impaired. Nowadays there are many methods that can be used; be it braille, smart phone apps, listening via synthetic speech etc and so we invited four visually impaired language enthusiasts...

  
• 09.26.2023

  Inclusive Farm

  Inclusive Farm in Bedfordshire is more than just a livestock farm. It is run by totally blind Mike Duxbury and his sighted partner and they open the farm up to those with disabilities to explore agriculture. In Touch pays a...

  
• 09.19.2023

  Be My AI; Orla Guerin in Yemen

  Be My AI is an artificial intelligence engine that is being tested by Be My Eyes - an app that connects visually impaired smartphone users to sighted assistance. There are thousands of people currently testing the AI offering and it...

  
• 09.12.2023

  Guide Dogs Q&A

  We are hosting a question and answer session with the charity Guide Dogs. Many of you have been sending us your very considered questions and concerns about various aspects of how the organisation operates; including waiting lists, training methods, eligibility...

  
• 09.05.2023

  STEP Training with Guide Dogs

  Since 2017, the charity Guide Dogs have adopted a new way of training their dogs. It's called the STEP method, standing for Standardised Training for Excellent Partnerships. The method has received a lot of criticism, with people believing it is...

  
• 08.29.2023

  The IBSA World Games

  The International Blind Sports Federation has just concluded its first World Games in the UK, with most sports taking place across the University of Birmingham campus. Over a thousand athletes from 70 countries competed in various sports and for some,...

  
• 08.22.2023

  A Treatment for Two Eye Diseases; Tactile Breast Examinations

  Faricimab, or as it is commercially known Vabysmo, is a drug that has recently been approved for use by the NHS to treat two eye diseases: diabetic macular oedema (DMO) and age-related macular degeneration (AMD), with fewer injections. Both conditions...

  
• 08.15.2023

  RNIB Job Advert; Access to the Women's World Cup

  The RNIB recently advertised the role of Customer Support Officer, but there was a particular bit of wording that drew an instant and indignant reaction from a number of blind and partially sighted people who read it. The initial advert...

  
• 08.08.2023

  Braille on Food Labelling; Disability Policy at the White House

  Getting braille onto food labelling is the subject of an ongoing campaign by a number of disability groups in Scotland. Oban and District Access Panel, Disability Equality Scotland and Sight Scotland have taken their campaign to the Scottish Government and...

  
• 08.01.2023

  A Successful Judicial Review; Renting with a Guide Dog

  Dr Yusuf Osman was frequently getting information from the Department for Work and Pensions in a form that was inaccessible to him. This led to him to bringing a judicial review and he won it. Yusuf, along with the RNIB's...

  
• 07.25.2023

  Delays in accessing essential services

  When being diagnosed with sight loss, it is often essential to be able to access your local sight loss support services quickly. This can be for things like long cane training, to guidance on Personal Independence Payments. We discuss the...

  
• 07.18.2023

  Books on Blindness

  Selina Mills and Andrew Leland have both just published new books about blindness. Andrew's is called The Country of the Blind: A Memoir at the End of Sight and Selina's is Life Unseen: A Story of Blindness. Both books have...

  
• 07.11.2023

  Tennis

  Tennis has long been considered one of the hardest sports to adapt, especially if you have little or no vision. Well, it has been done and Amanda Green from Metro Blind Sport and VI tennis player herself, tells us about...

  
• 07.04.2023

  A Near-Fatal Train Accident; Music Producer Robin Millar

  Abdul Eneser is a blind student in Glasgow and he regularly uses the train to return home to Manchester. He could soon be taking legal action against three major train companies due to his falling onto the tracks at Manchester...

  
• 06.27.2023

  The Support Hub; The RNIB's Helpline Services

  We often hear on In Touch about your frustrations with having to repeatedly provide your access requirements to many different organisations, for them often to not be listened to. Well Experian, the company perhaps best known for checking your credit...