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 | In Touch - transcript BBC Radio 4 |
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| 15 July 2003 Listen to the In Touch for 15 July 2003 PRESENTER: PETER WHITE PRODUCER: CHERYL GABRIEL WHITE Good evening. Later: as more and more of us are having our reading needs met by synthetic speech screen readers we look at the very latest developments in that field. We'll also be charting the progress of England's blind footballers as they fight to reach the Paralympics. And in the meantime we get a few lessons in the rules of blind football as well. But first, to judge from your calls and e-mails, there is almost complete unanimity from guide dog owners about the recent changes made during the leadership of their chief executive Geraldine Peacock, particularly at the closing of the 15 training centres has been a total disaster. But that's a premise that the Guide Dogs for the Blind Association don't accept. And they say they have the evidence to prove it. Well I've been talking to their director of operations, Stephen Kirk, and I asked him first why he maintained that the opinions that we've been receiving from almost all the dog owners who'd actually contacted us and left their details were not representative? KIRK I don't think there is a mismatch. There are a lot of guide dog owners out there that do have real concerns and wherever possible we've been trying to meet those concerns. It isn't a trite thing to say that we have been listening, I personally have done an awful lot of tours round the country trying to provide factual information to guide dog owners who have these concerns. And I think in general the response from the overwhelming majority of the audience has been very positive towards that. WHITE But you see the response we're getting is much more overwhelmingly against what's been done than the kind of accepting response that you say. Now we can only report what we hear, why do you think that people are perhaps telling you one thing and telling us another? KIRK I wouldn't be prepared to speculate on people's motivations. We've done a survey of the people that have gone through all forms of guide dog training for this year and that number - the number that responded to us was just over 200 and that's a fair number of people who've been directly receiving training the new ways. Now of those 200 people statistically there is no difference in people's levels of satisfaction with hotel based training, residential based training at traditional centres, in fact the one thing that is very loud and clearly coming back to us is that more and more people are wishing to be trained and are more satisfied with being trained at home. WHITE But one thing that was coming over loud and clear to us is that there was real concern about training in hotels - the idea that there was a lack of privacy, that people perhaps felt on display. And the other point that was made quite strongly and struck a chord was this idea of support from your peers, perhaps more experienced guide dog owners, that kind of thing, which you would miss if you had domiciliary training. KIRK Yeah I do recognise that people have very well-founded fears but I would suggest that what we - if we really want to be very objective about it we have to ask those people who've gone through that type of training how they felt and we have done that, we're not complacent and what is coming back very clearly from those people is that - there was one specific question that we asked them which was how would you relate the training you've just had, if you were in a hotel, how would you relate that to the training you've previously had in a guide dog centre - was it better or was it worse? And it's come back better every time. I'm quite confident that what we're doing actually does meet people's needs. WHITE Does that mean then that the idea of the centres, which clearly for some people still held a strong appeal, does that mean that there's no chance of you changing or amending or modifying the policy that you're following? KIRK What we will be doing Peter is all the time assessing what we do, we're constantly measuring to get that feedback because it would be foolish in the extreme to go down a single policy strategy that doesn't deliver and to a degree it is a - it has been a leap of faith when we first started this and had we got information back from our clients that have actually been on this training that we weren't delivering the service, that it was unsafe, that it was unsound, that the quality of the partnership had declined then of course we'd revisit it. But the bottom line is every statistic that we look at, both from a generic point of view and anecdotally, is saying that we've got this right. So right now there is no reason that we should be reconsidering this strategy but that isn't a position of dogma or anything else, we will be reviewing it as we go along and if we get it wrong in one place then we'll look again. But our information and evidence so far says that we're on the right track. WHITE Stephen Kirk thank you very much. Now this subject has now had a good run for its money and it will take something very fresh to re-open the subject but on In Touch we never say never. Which is just as well because until recently many people who know me would have said that I would never quit my technophobic ways and settle down in front of a computer keyboard. But I have, as their technology has got more sophisticated so the benefits have increased and the temptation has become irresistible and clearly a lot of other visually impaired people have gone the same way, which is perhaps now creating a sort of critical mass of consumers who watch developments in this field with great interest. Well Gary O'Donoghue has been our man at Sight Village, one of Britain's biggest exhibitions of technology of special interest to visually impaired people, to discover what the latest trends are. Gary, first of all, specifically on the issue of synthetic speech and screen readers, what's around? O'DONOGHUE Well what we saw at Sight Village this year was a demonstration of an upcoming release of the software which is called JAWS. JAWS stands for Job Access for Windows with Speech and it's a principle piece of software used by a large number of visually impaired people around the world. The manufacturers - Freedom Scientific - believe that something like 80 per cent - they have something like 80 per cent of the market. Now this software reads the screen to you and reads back the keys as you press the keys when you're typing in a word processor or something like that and they're about to release a new version in September - JAWS version 5. And I think some of the interesting features we saw demonstrated at Sight Village they're putting a lot of effort into internet access, not surprisingly, finding better ways for blind people to navigate their way around difficult web pages, whether you want to do your online shopping, your online banking or simply browse for some CDs on one of the many sites where you can buy CDs. But they're trying to make that process as easy as possible as the internet gets more complicated. WHITE So this isn't really so much about clarity of speech, it's really about the more complexity of what you can actually do with it? O'DONOGHUE It is and there are implications for that because a lot of people will say that there's more information in a sense comes out of your speech software, the thing talks for much longer and it chatters away and chatters away and that can be quite a wearisome process. So I think on the other hand they're also trying to develop systems where, for example, in a word processor if you want to know that the text you've written is in bold or is in italic or is underlined they're now going to give you the opportunity, in a sense, to have that announced with a sound rather than with speech. So your heading might say - Heading One - and instead of saying - Heading One Underlined Text - or something like that, it might say - Heading One Bong. And in a sense I think it's quite a good development because it will cut the amount of chatter and anyone who uses or listens to synthetic speech for a lot of time during the day knows it can be quite wearisome. WHITE It can drive you made, you're quite right. JAWS is not the only company kind of in this field, anything else on that particular area? O'DONOGHUE A couple of other competitors JAWS has, one is a company called GW Micro, which produces a piece of software called Window-Eyes, they've got a version out in what they call Beta testing, at the moment, that's prior to its main release. That is quite popular with a lot of people, that has similar sorts of functionality to JAWS. And then there's a programme made by Dolphin Systems, which is a British company, called Hal - those are really the three big, if you like, the three big pieces of software in the market at this time for visually impaired people. WHITE Gary O'Donoghue thanks very much indeed. And just before you go you're a bit of a sports nut aren't you? O'DONOGHUE I am you know, in fact I hear what your next item's going to be, I used to play for the blind England team. WHITE Did you really? O'DONOGHUE Aged 17. WHITE Well stay listening then, this should interest you. Last week we heard about the promising progress being made by the England blind football team in the fourth blind European Championships, currently being staged for the first time on English soil. We'd just beaten Greece and we're on top of the five team round robin group but with champion Spain still to play. A place in the final would take the England team, managed by Tony Larkin, to next year's Paralympics in Athens. Well our reporter Mani Djazmi was at the Manchester Velodrome all last week, very excitable he was too, and before we find out about what happened on the pitch Mani give us a flavour of the rules first. I mean for a start how does it differ from the rules which sighted footballers use? DJAZMI Well the ball's different, that has ball bearings in so they can hear where it is. All the outfield players are blindfolded, which they obviously aren't in sighted football. The keepers are fully sighted though - their job, as well as being goalkeeper, is to instruct the defenders in the sort of defensive third of their team's pitch as to where opposition players are and who's got the ball on their side. The coach stands on the halfway line and he kind of controls the middle third. And the attackers have a person called a goal caller who stands behind the goal they're attacking and when their ball's in play they call them towards the goal and if they have a set piece - a free kick or a penalty -then the goal caller taps each post and then stands in the middle of the goal, calls to them so they can orientate themselves with where they have to shoot to. WHITE They're spoilt aren't they - we never had all these sophistications when I used to play at school. DJAZMI I know, well I'd never played blind football before, I always played with sighted people and I didn't have anything like this at all, it was just get in there, muck in and … WHITE Take a swipe and hope for the best. DJAZMI Absolutely. WHITE Right, so it's obviously far more sophisticated and you've obviously had a good week. DJAZMI It was brilliant, I really enjoyed myself, for many reasons, one of them being that the England team were a great bunch of lads, they took it very seriously and because I was there with them for the whole week then you get close to them and you enjoy the thrills and suffer the spills equally. WHITE Well one of the things you did there was compile your sort of diary of events. So this is Mani Djazmi's flavour of Manchester. MUSIC - NATIONAL ANTHEM LARKIN We lost to Spain in the European championships in Paris two years ago and now because we're on home soil we want to try and win this competition. We've got Dan Harris who is our captain, plays in defence, in the last European championships he got player of the tournament. Dave Clark, who's our top goalscorer and again in the last European championships who got the trophy for the top goalscorer. We've had good preparation and what I try to say to the lads is well we've got France today and we'll take each game as it comes. MUSIC - NATIONAL ANTHEM DJAZMI The dignitaries have come and gone, the formalities are complete and the next five games will determine whether England can lay to rest the ghosts of the past two championships in which Spain had beaten them to the title. First up though it's France. COMMENTATOR Cook can come up at the England left hand side, chips it forward and Dave Clark will collect. Here's the big strong Frenchman goes through two or three … and a goal for England from Dave Clark, opening his account … And England could come again, no they can't, Boukari gets the ball, through the centre, puts the ball in and there's the equalising goal. DJAZMI Dave Clark you scored a goal there, your 33rd, but I suppose not much consolation because you didn't win the game. CLARK We got a point, that's enough. In our next three games we go through to the final, so what, it's fine. LARKIN A little bit disappointed, pleased with the performance, I thought Dave Clark played well, Darren Cook but it's all about take your chances and putting them away and today we didn't do it. DJAZMI England are just about to come out and play against Italy and the Italians are an interesting side, we haven't seen them play yet but we've heard a lot about them. Apparently, allegedly I should probably say, they were out till the early hours of Sunday morning enjoying the nightlife of Manchester, went back to the hotel, a few hours sleep then off to the Beatles Museum and lunch in Liverpool, only just made it here in time for the opening ceremony. COMMENTATOR Dave Clark's got the ball, takes it round one, tries to go round two, is forced wide, Cook's free in the centre if he can pass it through, he doesn't need him though. Darren Cook was left in space and free, Cook called out, Dave didn't need him - England 3 Italy 0 - a hat trick for Dave Clark. DJAZMI Keep playing like that Dave and the rumours will be that England's a one-man team. COOK Well I mean the only way you get the ball like that, in a position to get it like that is through good passing, good interplay, good communication and that's what happened today. DJAZMI Darren Harris, England captain, what would you do without Dave Clark? HARRIS We'd still win but he's a very good striker, he's playing a lot better at the moment and we're going to need him to be on top form all the way through the tournament. DJAZMI From time to time we're told to be quiet here in the stadium, not that there are many people here to be loud and that's because the players need silence while the ball's in play, so they can hear the ball and obviously each other. I asked Lee Greatbatch, who's been one of England's best players so far, how important it is to the players. GREATBATCH Yes it's very important as the number one thing we need to do is listen to the ball when it's rolling alone the surface because it's got ball bearings. When we get into certain scenarios it's very important that we home in on goal. DJAZMI Now Lee's 19 and he's still a student and if you talk to most people they'll tell you that he's a great example of how a young man can get involved with blind football. He's been playing for England for three years and has come on leaps and bounds according to the manager Tony Larkin. I asked him earlier what kind of advice he'd give to aspiring 15 or 16 year old blind players who want to take blind football seriously. GREATBATCH It's built up my confidence, I'm good at working in a team, I'm good at communicating and it could all do the same for you so come along and get involved with the football. You can take all of the confidence, communication into ordinary life. COMMENTATOR Okay would you please put your hands together for England and Spain. DJAZMI This game against Spain is virtually a semi-final for Tony Larkin's men. If England win they'll go through to the final on Saturday. If they don't then they're reliant on Greece to do them a favour against France tomorrow, which is pretty unlikely. COMMENTATOR Garridos passing it through [name], right hand side to Lopez who gets the shot in but it's right across the goal, that won't trouble John Pugh. And Tony Larkin, the English coach, calls his time out for this half. We're eight minutes and five seconds to go. LARKIN TALKING TO HIS TEAM At the moment we're playing a 100 miles an hour and we're actually playing a move ahead before we get the ball, Dave I know it's hard, just use your sense a bit, find them, just lean into them and try [indistinct words] that ball. Okay yeah, we've got to be careful - no more, don't pull them. COMMENTATOR Martin shoots and this time puts it in. And Spain lead this game with one minute and 47 seconds to go by two goals to nil. DJAZMI I'm in the England dressing room with Tony Larkin, you can hear the shower in the background, was that a fair result? LARKIN Not really 'cos to be truthful two nil I think it's a bit flattering for them because it was a very even game. The first goal was going to be important but the good thing was they didn't get in open play, there's not a great deal between Spain and ourselves, the only difference is now that they've got more players to pick from. DJAZMI Dave Clark unlucky, it's out of your hands whether you can qualify for the final, do you think you will? CLARK You never know, funny things have happened. The great thing is France have got to beat Greece. COMMENTATOR There's Statios again, standing over the ball with [name], Statios takes it, tries this time to go round the outside, tries to get a bit of space. Greece 2 France 1 with four minutes and 46 seconds … DJAZMI And of course that win means that England have qualified for the Paralympic Games in Athens. But all that is more than a year away but the England team's focus is on this game here, the final of the European Championships and England are potentially 50 playing minutes away from finally becoming the champions of Europe. MUSIC VOX POPS Obviously we know they're a good side and we know they've got good players but I really feel we've got to impose ourselves on them. I believe that we are ready to win this European Championship. We have a good team, we are in a good moment, always to play with England it's very, very difficult. This is the pinnacle as far as blind football goes and we really want to win this tournament. MUSIC COMMENTATOR And England really do need to spend a little more time in the Spanish half of the field and that's what Darren Cook's trying to do now, he's got a shot on goal, can he shoot? He shoots and scores. Spain have a free kick. Lopez takes the ball, moves to his left and equalises for Spain. Rosado twists and turns, can he get a shot a goal, he can. England now find themselves two one down with a eleven and a half minutes to go. Rosado shoots and puts it in. A fourth Spanish goal with just a minute and 10 seconds remaining in this game, surely now means that Spain will retain their championship. MUSIC LARKIN We're disappointed in this even though we've achieved a lot, we all want to move forward. We've still got a lot to work on to catch Spain up but we'll do it. WHITE Mani Djazmi reporting from Manchester. So are you going to try and blag a trip to Athens then Mani? DJAZMI Well I think it would be only sensible for me to follow the story on really. WHITE Absolutely, journalistic integrity demands it I think. Mani Djazmi thank you very much indeed. That's it for today. If you have any comments or queries about the programme do call our Radio 4 Action Line on 0800 044 044. From me Peter White and the team goodbye. Visit the In Touch Message Board Back to the In Touch page The BBC is not responsible for external websites |
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