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 visit to hear about how Mike performs various farming tasks without any sight and, perhaps most importantly, to meet some of the animals.

Presenter: Peter White

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 allows them to take pictures of their surroundings and the AI will describe, with great detail, what is in that image. For example, it can be helpful for things like navigation, describing clothing items or reading menus. However, a lot of its testers are greatly concerned over a recent change where the AI will no longer describe what is in an image, if there is a human present. Sean Dilley is a BBC journalist and user of Be My AI, and he describes the issues that could be behind these changes.

*After the time of recording this programme, it appears that the feature has been restored for some users.

Orla Guerin is the BBC's Senior International Correspondent and she has recently been back to war-torn Yemen, to catch up with a blind boy she met there two years ago. Ahmed made a particular impression because he was teaching his peers in his bombed-out school. Orla talks with Peter about what Ahmed is like and about his future ambitions.

Presenter: Peter White

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 for new and replacement guide dogs and more. Answering these questions is Pete Osborne, who is is Guide Dogs' Chief Operations Officer.

Presenter: Peter White

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 the cause of long waiting lists for new and replacement dogs, and so we paid a visit to a training centre in Atherton, Greater Manchester, to find out more about how it works and ask why their previous method of training was scrapped.

Presenter: Peter White

Website image description: Peter White sits smiling in the centre of the image, wearing a dark green jumper. Above Peter's head is the BBC logo (three individual white squares house each of the three letters). Bottom centre and overlaying the image are the words 'In Touch' and the Radio 4 logo (the word Radio in a bold white font, with the number 4 inside a white circle). The background is a bright mid-blue with two rectangles angled diagonally to the right. Both are behind Peter, one of a darker blue and the other is a lighter blue.

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, it was not just a medal on the cards, but also qualification points for the 2024 Paralympics. We attended the games and spoke to athletes, team officials and members of the public trying out visually impaired sports for the first time.

Presenter: Peter White

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 result in vision loss caused by swelling behind the eye, which can now be slowed or halted by injections. Robin Hamilton is an Ophthalmic Surgeon at Moorfield’s Eye Hospital and he provides details of how this drug works and Bernie Warren tells us about its prospects from a DMO patient perspective. Bernie was also on a National Institute for Health and Care Excellence panel, that helped approve the drug for NHS use.

Discovering Hands is a project in Germany that trains visually impaired women to perform breast examinations. The project involves using touch to locate early indications of breast cancer. Elvira Häußler is one of the women who is employed to perform them and she, along with gynaecologist Dr. Frank Hoffmann who came up with the idea, tell us more about it and whether it may one day come to the UK.

Presenter: Peter White

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 stated that the systems used within the role were not compatible with JAWS screen reader. The advert has since been amended to dispute this, stipulating that JAWS could be used with some work arounds, such as scripting. The RNIB's Director of Services, David Newbold addresses your concerns and sheds light on what happened.

The Lionesses, England's women's football team, are causing waves at the World Cup and FIFA have developed a way of making the games more accessible to visually impaired smart phone users. They, along with the Centre for Access to Football in Europe, are providing audio described commentary through the FIFA Interpreting App. It aims to fill in the gaps and deliver a better football experience for visually impaired fans.

To access the audio described commentary through the app, the following access code can be used: ADCFWWC2023 (this is case sensitive).

Presenter: Peter White

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 are currently seeking visually impaired people's experiences and preferences when it comes to accessible food packaging.

If you'd like to submit your experiences, visit: http://inclusivecommunication.scot/braille-campaign

Day Al-Mohamed may not be a household name here in the UK, but she is certainly making waves in the United States. As well as being an author, a broadcaster, a documentary film maker and co-founder of a company that helps disabled people get into film making, she also spent a year working at the White House. There, she was Director of Disability Policy and would review new legislation and current policies to ensure the rights and needs of disabled people were being met.

Presenter: Peter White

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 Senior Legal Advisor Samantha Fothergill, describe what the ruling means for him and other visually impaired people.

Finding somewhere to rent at the moment really isn't easy, with low availability and soaring prices, but having a guide dog shouldn't be a factor that makes it more challenging. The right to have one in a rental property is enshrined in law, but Aleksandra Edwards has been looking for somewhere in the West Midlands for around two years and suspects that her guide dog could be a factor. She and Chris Theobald from Guide Dogs UK tell us more about this problem - that appears to be on the increase.

If you would like to submit your opinions to the consultations about the closure of the remaining ticketing offices at railway stations, you can call:

Presenter: Peter White

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 impacts of delays in accessing these services and the Certificate of Vision Impairment (CVI). If eligible, this certificate can trigger support available from your local authority's sight support team - if it has one. We discuss these themes with a consultant ophthalmologist from Moorfields Eye Hospital, a patient, a rehab officer and an ex-eye clinic liaison officer (ECLO).

Further information: If you do not qualify for a CVI, you don’t need to go through the registration process to get help from your local social services. When you visit an optician, they can provide something called a Low Vision Leaflet (LVL). This contains contact details for sources of information and advice, along with a form that you can send to your local social services to ask for an assessment. Moreover, hospital eye clinic staff can fill in a form called a Referral of Vision Impairment (RVI), which does the same, but also staff are able state how urgently they think you require help, so you do not have to wait until the end of your treatment at the clinic to be referred.

Presenter: Peter White

Website image description: Peter White sits smiling in the centre of the image, wearing a dark green jumper. Above Peter's head is the BBC logo (three individual white squares house each of the three letters). Bottom centre and overlaying the image are the words "In Touch" and the Radio 4 logo (the word Radio in a bold white font, with the number 4 inside a white circle). The background is a bright mid-blue with two rectangles angled diagonally to the right. Both are behind Peter, one of a darker blue and the other is a lighter blue.