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12 July 2005 Listen to the In Touch for 12 July 2005 IN TOUCH TX: 12.07.05 2040-2100 PRESENTER: PETER WHITE PRODUCER: CHERYL GABRIEL WHITE Good evening. Tonight, whether your preferred method of reading is Braille or in large print you too can now join in with the playground gossip about the very latest Harry Potter book, we'll be telling you how in a few moments. We'll also be examining the latest piece of kit to appear on our list of desert island gadgets, this one also helps you to read and discovering how a dream of steam has come true after 20 years. CLIP People like to come and help and helping two blind guys in a steam launch seems to attract people. WHITE We'll be telling you more about that rather soggy dream in a few minutes. But first, more than 95% of books published in this country will never make it into a format which blind and partially sighted can read. But today for once let's take a leaf from the New Testament and rejoice over the one book which is found, rather than the 95% which are lost. JK Rowling's very latest Harry Potter creation - Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince - is to be published simultaneously in standard print, large print and Braille and it's the first time this has ever happened. It's another step along the way in the Right to Read campaign, indeed the only cloud on the horizon is that the audio book version won't be ready to come out at the same time, that would turn it into a treble. Still let's not be churlish - this, as I said, is a step in the right direction. Well I'm joined by John Godber, who's head of projects and publications at the Royal National Institute of the Blind. John Godber, first of all, how did this come about - this one book? GODBER The RNIB has been working very closely with lots of other organizations of and for blind people and people with dyslexia in something called The Right to Read Alliance and we've been working with publishers behind the scenes for quite a long time to influence them to make more of their materials available to their customers. And I think an important point about this is that publishers are beginning to realise that blind people are part of the mainstream people who are hungry for books, just like anybody else. And we've been talking particularly with Bloomsbury about the Harry Potter novels. WHITE Yeah, now obviously you've chosen Harry Potter because it's got enormous impact but equally that in some senses makes it more sensitive as well, so how difficult was it to cut a deal? GODBER Well as you can imagine it wasn't that easy because there's an awful lot of security surrounding the whole Harry Potter novels. But we talked very patiently with Bloomsbury and they talked patiently with us and we've got to this conclusion. WHITE Presumably in order to produce a Braille version, in particular, you needed the text quite early, I mean how long ago did you get it? GODBER Well we actually got it about a week ago. WHITE So it can be done quite quickly? GODBER So it can be done quite quickly with technology. The thing that takes the time is actually producing the hard copies, the translation doesn't take very long with the aid of computers, though we do have to check things like Harry Potter quite carefully because, as you know, there are some vocabulary in those books which doesn't occur in standard English and you never quite know how the Braille translation program's going to handle Dumbledore and things like that. So it still needs quite a lot of human intervention to turn out even a straightforward Braille book but it's embossing the copies that takes the time. WHITE Right, so when is the book to be available in all these formats? GODBER The book comes out at one minute past midnight on Saturday and we've got our fingers crossed that blind Braille readers will have the book, if they've pre-ordered it by the end of Wednesday, on their doorstep on Saturday morning, as sighted readers will. WHITE And who do they get this from - do they get this from you as a purchase book and is it available as a loan book as well? GODBER At the moment you buy it in the way that you'd normally buy a Braille book. One of our aims Peter is that eventually I'll walk into the bookshop with my credit card, specify the book I want, the medium I want, pay the same price whatever the format and get it immediately. We're not quite there yet, so yes order it from RNIB in the normal way or indeed borrow it from National Library and both organisations are taking advance orders for sale and loan. WHITE Now obviously this is very exciting and it proves that it can be done but it is only one book and it'll be of great interest to children and David Blunkett, as a well known JK Rowling fan, but when can we see this kind of thing as almost something that you'd expect rather than as a news story? GODBER Well we're in the hands of all sorts of people and to be honest the needs of us blind Braille readers or tape users just aren't as high up the government or publishers' agenda as we would like them to be. But technology is on our side and organisations are beginning to, as I said, recognise that blind people are not a separate group of people who live on a different planet. So I wouldn't like to give a hostage for fortune and sort of say yeah in a few months time it will all be wonderful because we're still having to put a lot of voluntary sector subsidy into all these productions. So if all the publishers in the world suddenly gave us all their disks tomorrow it would require an enormous amount of money from our collecting tins to make it still possible. So we're still looking for government and the mainstream publishing industry just to help out and realise that we're just part of the mainstream. WHITE So given that it is one book what does this kind of thing achieve - is it really the fact that it's a puff in a way, it's giving publicity to the need? GODBER To be honest for me the thing it achieves is the idea that blind children, particularly, will be able to go to school on Monday morning and talk about a book because that's in the end what it's all about for us, it's people being able to read what they want to read at the same time as other people and join in the general discussion about it and excitement about it. So that's the end because Harry Potter's a particularly high profile book, it's particularly good that we've been able to get that one. But having secured that one and particularly with all the security around it, it does mean now though it's just the excuses that anybody might want to offer, some of the more conservative, with a small c, publishers etc., it does get more difficult for them to say - Oh we'd love to but we couldn't quite - because now we can say - Well it happened with the Harry Potter. So find a better excuse. WHITE Just one final thing because obviously one longer term solution to this problem in terms of quantity is this whole business of electronic books and the Bookshare scheme that we've been discussing on this programme with some of your colleagues, it would be silly to raise this whole issue and not ask you what the very latest on that situation is. GODBER The very latest is that negotiations are still going on, we still absolutely intend to use every means and every scheme possible to get people the books they want to read. We need an awful lot of willing support from publishers and from organisations and from people like Microsoft and everybody to make all the things possible. There are lots of issues about digital rights management. So it would be great if we could just storm in and demand but we can't, we have to work with people and we have to go at the speed that people are prepared to go at. So again I can't give you a it's going to happen on day x or day z but three weeks ago I couldn't tell you about the Harry Potter thing because we hadn't sorted it out. WHITE Okay, well we will be watching this and we hope we can promise people that when you do hear about it you'll hear about it first on In Touch. John Godber, thank you very much indeed. So what do the prime targets of this book think about it all? Potter fanatic 10-year-old Richard Wheatley is going to be representing The Right to Read campaign at the book launch on Saturday when he'll be allowed to ask one question of Harry Potter's creator JK Rowling, which makes Richard one up on us, we were very politely turned down for an interview of any questions at all. Our reporter Mani Djazmi though went to meet Richard Wheatley and he wondered what that one question would be. WHEATLEY Are you going to include a blind character in one of the next books? And then we could see just how she thinks a blind character could cope in this magical wizarding world. I have every single one on tape and actually all of them are mine except for the second one, which is the family's. DJAZMI As a Harry Potter fan, first of all, how excited are you that the sixth book is finally coming out and also as a blind Harry Potter fan how excited are you that you're going to be able to read it at the same time as your sighted friends? WHEATLEY Well this is brilliant because it's out in Braille at the same time, I can keep up with my friends, as you say, and I can read, read, read. Because my mother can only really read a couple of chapters a night if it's in print and then the tapes come out a long time after the books come out. DJAZMI So last time the book came out, the fifth edition two years ago, how long did it take for you and your mum to finish it? WHEATLEY About two months actually. DJAZMI So now that you're about to get hold of the book yourself you must have plans, are you, you're not going to be leaving the house for at least a week? WHEATLEY Unfortunately I'm going to have to because of school but yeah I think it's going to be much more fun doing my homework now. DJAZMI You're not going to do your homework are you - you're going to be reading Harry Potter. WHEATLEY Exactly, that reading is actually part of my homework, so just read Harry Potter and I've got a book to read over the summer. I really want to know what's going to happen. What is that deadly weapon which Voldemort really wants? And is Voldemort going to get it? That's what I'd like to know. DJAZMI So as far as you're concerned does Harry Potter rule? WHEATLEY Yes. Simply just - yes. WHITE Richard Wheatley talking to Mani Djazmi and I reckon it's probably going to be pretty quiet in the Wheatley household for the next week or so while he sorts it out. Let's just hope that Richard, as an adult, is able to get a wider selection of books than perhaps his predecessors have been able to do. And now for the latest offering in our desert island gadgets series. Now most listeners with some sight have probably experienced the frustration - and we stay with reading here - of scanning text and ending up with a lot of dashes and dots and squiggly lines. But Caroline Golding seems to have found something that not only works but is also very small. GOLDING I'm sitting at my desk in my small student room where I'm surrounded by books and files and papers and various other bits and pieces. I've got my laptop in front of me but I'd be hard pressed to fit a scanner on here as well. Which is why I was quite pleased to discover this little gadget. Basically it's a scanning pen. It's about the size of chocolate bar, plugged in by the USB connection, like so. It's really simple to use, all I've got is the scanning program open and a blank page where I want the text to appear on the screen. What I think is particularly good about this pen is you don't have to scan a whole page for maybe two lines that you actually want, you can use it as you would a highlighter just picking up the bits you need. Though it's probably not ideal for pages and pages of text. To scan all you do is put the pen over the text you want, you press down and you get a little green light that comes on and then you just move it across the text and then lift it up at the other end. As soon as you lift the pen off the page the text immediately appears on the screen and then you can manipulate it however you want. Personally I always get rather worried about addresses and telephone numbers because I think there's so much potential to go wrong by just missing out one digit. So I'm going to try it over the numbers and addresses on this page and see how it fares. Well that's quite interesting - I've got the e-mail address up on the screen and it's automatically created me a link, which is rather nice. And if I just check - the numbers are perfect, which is rather good. The pen costs just under a hundred pounds and I've been really pleased with it. I certainly couldn't argue with its size. Whoever said bigger was better? WHITE I don't know Caroline but perhaps someone who's listening will know. That's Caroline Golding. And if you'd like to extol the virtues of the one gadget that you couldn't possibly do without why not tell us about it and we'll see if we can find room for it in the programme. The number to ring: 0800 044 044 to talk to our action line. And finally today it's said that if you dream your dream for long enough then maybe one day it'll come true. Well such a dream has become a reality for two blind steam buffs who kept their obsession alive and 20 long years later finally awoke to find themselves crewing a steam launch, designed and built with them at the helm. A very waterlogged Dave Kent chased the dream to Somerset for In Touch and with only an umbrella between him and the dreamers total immersion in torrential rain he reports on this soggy Sunday summer boat ride. STEAM LAUNCH ACTUALITY KENT Well it's a grizzly old Sunday lunchtime and I'm here on the Bridgewater and Taunton Canal in the bow of Miracle - a steam launch - that is the brainchild of physiotherapists Ian Hopkin and Roger Goodchild. Now Miracle has a bit of a story about it, that goes back 20 years. Ian, how does it all start? HOPKIN Well Roger and I were physiotherapy students back in the late 1960s and I introduced Roger to steam models and then 20 years ago we decided to actually do a big project. I'd always wanted a steam launch from about the age of five and Roger was into model engineering and steam engines. And 20 years ago we bought the castings for the engine and we found an engineer who would actually make it for us. But - that was Fred, who was a very capable engineer but he died halfway through the project. So we had to find other engineers who would actually finish the engine for us. Alex Richie did some of it and then he'd passed it on to John Quick who finished the engine for us. It's quite a sophisticated piece of kit because the exhaust steam doesn't go up the chimney, it's condensed back into condensate and water and that hot water is then pumped back into the boiler. So it's a closed loop system, as used in big practice. KENT Roger, you're both totally blind, how did the designing of the boat work? GOODCHILD Well it was really built around the engine, basically we both wanted an engine to play with and the idea was put it in a boat because whereas there are laws to stop blind people from making a nuisance of themselves on the Queen's highways, there are no laws in fact to stop a blind man coming up and down the canals and inland waterways upsetting the water fowl. So the boat came afterwards really and we managed to acquire a secondhand fibre glass hull which had never been used but its innards had to be ripped out and rebuilt to accommodate the steam plant. Now I've got workshop facilities and able to maintain the engine, with a great deal of help from Norman and that's how we keep going, it's just something to play with, expensive toy for ageing little boys to play with. KENT So there's both you and Ian, anymore people to run the boat? GOODCHILD Yes we have, in fact we've got two very competent crew in the stern at the moment - Roy on the engine and stoking and Norman, who is my partner's father, who is steering, both of them highly competent engineers. KENT Ian, when you're out and about on the craft here do you delegate jobs out between the four of you? HOPKIN Yes we do. This morning I was sitting by the hand water pump and continually asking about the water level in the boiler and pumping when necessary. Norman was steering. Roy was operating the engine and firing the boiler. Roger was up at the front manning the whistle and fenders. As we get more experienced we'll switch things around a bit. Firing the boiler is a bit tricky because it's quite a small fire and it's difficult to get a decent fire going. We have special coal - steam coal - from Derbyshire but it is a bit tricky and maintaining the water level in the boiler is critical, it's a small boiler and the water level does jump up and down. I must say I think we do have a lot of help from sighted people and without our sighted crew we couldn't operate the boat, it would be impossible. But people like to come and help and helping two blind guys in a steam launch seems to attract people and they just turn up. KENT How did you come about the name? HOPKIN Friends kept saying when's the boat going to be finished and we'd say next year, next year. When it did get finished we had a lot of trouble finding a name and we thought of At Last or Manana or Tomorrow. I did quite like the name triumph but people said no, that sounds like a motorcycle. So we rejected that. And Tenacity, Tenacious - well there's a sailing ship called Tenacious, so we couldn't have that. And a friend of mine, we were chatting away one night, and she said well what about Miracle, it's a bloody miracle you ever finished it and the name stuck. So the boys from Exmouth got happy with the paintbrush and the name's on the back. KENT Well we're all getting really soaked here in this wonderful Somerset summer weather, so why don't we fire the old beast up and head back for the docks? STEAM LAUNCH STARTING UP This would be the perfect thing to sit in on a Sunday afternoon and head down to the pub. CREW MEMBER Oh outside the Boat and Anchor is very enjoyable. Cor I'm cold. WHITE That report by Dave Kent on the creation of Ian Hopkin and Roger Goodchild. And I realised halfway through that report that of course I went to school with those two, indeed Roger Goodchild once gave me 200 lines for throwing a fruit cake at him during prep and what's more hitting him, which I was quite proud of. Anyway I often wondered what he'd do with his life, now I know. We were very tempted to play that great Otis Redding classic Sodden on the dock of the bay but we thought better of it as perhaps I should have that joke. That's it for today, as always you can contact us on 0800 044 044 with your views on the stories we chose or suggestions for topics you think we ought to be talking about. Meanwhile from me Peter White, my producer Cheryl Gabriel and the rest of 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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