In Touch

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 is happening elsewhere in the UK. In Scotland, there are no plans to close any ticket offices but, following a consultation, ministers are yet to reach a decision on their openin...

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 within the tech industry to discuss recent developments and what can be expected in the future, including artificial intelligence...

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 LeBlanc and a German boy, Werner Pfennig, who is pressed into serving as an anti-German radio broadcast interceptor for the Nazi army. Aria Mia Loberti plays the r...

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 two Matts - Matt Johnson, who is a blind data protection and privacy lawyer, and Matt Eason, who is a digital accessibility specialist and software developer - w...

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. Now, we have invited a number of visually impaired people, campaign groups and Transport Focus, who are the transport watchdog and one of the operat...

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 of Tel Aviv in Israel. They speak frankly about how their lives have been affected and dealing with the uncertainty of being blind during a war. During the 2014 conflict, Pe...

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 senior international reporter, Orla Guerin visited the couple in their home at the edge of Kyiv to find out more about what happened and the im...

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 with BBC World Service called Izabela in the Forest, where producer Monica Whitlock follows her around during one of her recording sessions and to immerse herself...

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 to share their tips and experiences. Each of them use languages in different ways such as teaching, social meet ups, family relations and even...

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 Producer: Beth...

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 n...

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. Pr...

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 mor...

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 offi...

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...

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...

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 submi...

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, wi...

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 yo...

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 similar themes, in that they assess where the societal attitudes towards blindness may have originated from and how they subsequently interweave into our modern society. Both a...

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 the history of where the adapted game came from. Amanda, along with totally blind player Monica Smith, also tell us about how it is played. Wimbledon is in full swing and there are...

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 Piccadilly train station. His case will be brought on the grounds that there were a lack of tactile paving on the platform at that time and failures of the Passenger Assista...

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 score, have tried to come up with a solution. They have launched something called The Support Hub, where you can provide your preferred methods of co...

For some, getting out and about means a leisurely stroll in the sunshine. For others, it's taking on the challenge of hostile and dangerous environments. Our guests this week tell us about losing their sight and the part exploring the great outdoors has played in dealing with it. You might associate entrepreneur and TV adventurer Amar Latif (who was awarded an OBE since we talked to him!) with cha...

The question of closing railway ticket offices has been in the headlines recently. Indeed, it remains one of the stumbling blocks to a settlement in the long running dispute between rail unions and train operators. One operator has already stopped selling tickets at discounted rates from their ticket offices for "same day" travel. This leaves travellers needing to use the internet or ticket vendin...