Publications Archive

The New Beacon, July/August 1991, 75(889)

Summary: The leading monthly magazine on issues concerning people with sight problems

The Journal of Blind Welfare

Editor: Ann Lee

© Royal National Institute for the Blind

Giving dogs a good name: Guide Dogs 1931-1991

Dogs have had a bad press recently, so it's good to be able to report something to celebrate. Alison Radevsky of the Guide Dogs for the Blind Association looks back over sixty years of the Association's work and describes how it has developed over the past few years.

This year, the Guide Dogs for the Blind Association celebrates its Diamond Jubilee. For sixty years, guide dogs have been leading the way to freedom and independence for thousands of visually-impaired people. The Association has come a long way since the first four guide dogs were trained with their owners in 1931, qualifying in what is now Guide Dog Week, the first week in October.

In those days, the dogs--mainly German shepherds--were bought or donated, and only young and very fit totally blind people could be trained to use guide dogs. There are now over 4,000 guide dog owners in this country. Each has different needs and abilities, but to each the partnership with a guide dog brings new confidence to tackle life's challenges.

Guide dog puppies are now specially bred by the Association. The seven regional training centres and four (soon to be five) smaller support centres run the programme of puppy walking (carried out by volunteers), training the dogs, matching them to their owners and teaching visually-impaired people to use their guide dogs safely. Around half the dogs now trained go to replace dogs which have retired after a working life of seven to eight years.

Applications for a guide dog are welcomed from anyone aged 16 or over who is experiencing difficulty getting about because of his or her visual impairment. There is no upper age limit--people in their 70s and even 80s have trained to use a guide dog. Some useful remaining sight need not be a bar to owning a guide dog, as long as it would not interfere with the dog's work. Residual vision is assessed before an application is accepted.

Over twenty per cent of guide dog owners now trained have other physical disabilities or health problems, in addition to blindness. These include varying degrees of hearing loss, diabetes, heart conditions, limb loss or incapacity, arthritis or some other form of restricted movement. Training can usually be modified to suit their limitations.

Applications are also welcomed from people whose first language is not English, although the applicant must be normally resident in the UK.

There is virtually no cost to having a guide dog. The only charges made are a nominal 50p for the dog, and £1 per week for board and lodging during up to four weeks of residential training. All the training, equipment and continued support is provided free of charge, and a substantial allowance is made towards the cost of feeding the dog. The Association pays all veterinary bills and can provide a kennel and run at work and fencing and a run at home, at no cost. It will also consider applications for help with any other costs arising out of training with GDBA.

Before accepting an applicant for training, the Association must decide whether he or she will be able to use and care for a guide dog properly, and, if so, what type of dog is best suited to his or her needs. Training with a guide dog involves learning how to work the dog safely and effectively, and how to feed, groom, exercise and otherwise care for the dog. This is usually undertaken on a residential course at one of the seven regional training centres, but there are now increasing opportunities for whole or part training from home.

When training is undertaken at a centre, an instructor will visit the newly qualified guide dog owner on his or her return to offer advice and support, particularly relating to routes that the owner will need to travel. Guide dog owners are routinely visited after this to ensure that the owner and dog continue to work safely and effectively. If unforeseen problems arise, a visit can be arranged at very short notice.

Much of the information given in the paragraphs above will have been familiar to readers, guide dog owners, visually-impaired and sighted people. But over the past few years, the Association has begun to expand the range of services it provides to guide dog owners. In doing so it is fulfilling a long-neglected passage in the Memorandum which specifies that one of the purposes for which the Association exists is to provide "other services and facilities" to help visually-impaired people. None of this new work implies any reduction in the provision of guide dogs, which will always remain the Association's primary concern.

At each regional training centre, a small “liaison” team has been appointed to carry out the new tasks. This development came as a result of GDBA's recognition of several needs. One was the need for the Association to co-ordinate its services carefully with those of other voluntary and statutory bodies, to try to make sure that a full range of services was available to all visually-impaired people throughout the country without duplication or gaps. This, then, was the first definition of liaison.

There was also the need for GDBA to liaise more closely with its own guide dog owners, and with potential guide dog owners, many of whom felt they needed additional help to make the best of their lives. Pressure on social services departments has often meant long waiting lists for such help. The Association's experience in guide dog training for visually-impaired people, zits nationwide facilities and its growing contacts with Social Services, local blind societies and other welfare organisations, all placed it in an ideal position to begin to offer a wider range of services.

The most obvious area to start such development was in the field of mobility. It had always been clear to GDBA training staff that a visually-impaired person who had already benefited from some mobility training was far more likely to prove suitable for, and then to succeed in, training with a guide dog. Individuals who have recently lost their sight, or have remained largely housebound from the time they have been unable to see to get about, tend to lack confidence in their own abilities and can find it more difficult to orientate themselves in their surroundings.

Vital members of the liaison teams, therefore, are orientation and mobility instructors who teach the use of the long cane. In addition, instruction in the use of sound clues and, equally important, tactile markers helps build confidence and independence.

As a result of close co-operation with social workers and voluntary bodies, an increasing number of guide dog applicants is being referred to GDBA. A significant number of those initially referred to GDBA for orientation and mobility training move on within a relatively short period--because of their new-found confidence to training with a guide dog.

During training with a guide dog, most visually-impaired people spend up to four weeks at one of the Association's centres. Although much of their time is occupied with the intensive training programme, there are some clear periods between sessions. It became obvious that many trainees would appreciate help and advice on adapting to blindness in areas other than mobility--for example kitchen and household tasks and communication. Now most of the Association's main regional centres have a resource centre, where GDOs (guide dog owners)--current, retired or in training--and potential guide dog applicants can improve their practical skills and try out a range of aids and equipment.

The resource centres are staffed by the liaison teams, many of whom already have qualifications in rehabilitation work. Some members will gain their nationally recognised certificates as rehabilitation workers at the Association's newly established base in Thatcham, where the first course, being followed by eight GDBA staff members, began in early 1991.

In addition to hands-on practical instruction, many GDOs expressed a need for information and advice on a wide range of topics and issues of concern to visually-impaired people. GDBA is therefore steadily developing its services in this area, providing a comprehensive library of leaflets and information bulletins on help available both nationally and locally from statutory or voluntary agencies. When the information cannot be provided direct, staff are able to find out from elsewhere or put the visually-impaired person in contact with someone who can help. GDOs have particularly valued the assistance given by the Assistant Liaison Officers, who are guide dog owners themselves.

Helping a client make the best use of any remaining sight is another aspect of the liaison teams' work. In some instances, for example, they have suggested ways which have enabled a client to read again, albeit slowly and painstakingly, using specialist pieces of equipment. If necessary, a formal low vision assessment is arranged. Referrals to ear specialists, too, have often helped considerably, leading to improved communication and mobility.

The liaison officers and their teams work closely with the training managers and staff, each identifying areas in which the others can best help. Their joint aim is to ensure that all guide dog owners, and those who are seriously considering applying for guide dog ownership, receive all the advice, support and training that the Association, and other bodies, can offer.

  • Anyone who would like more information on any of GDBA's services should contact the regional training centre for the area in which they live:

East Anglia 081-506 1515
Midlands 0926-337244
North East 0642-232666
North West 0204-492534
Scotland & N. Ireland 0307-63531
South East 0734-791911
South West 0392-72967

Compass Braille

A small but ambitious publishing house based on Dartmoor has started up with the bold aim of translating the Bible into braille in fourteen Indian languages--using hi-tech production methods to achieve its goal. Report by Robert Hesketh.

A converted Nonconformist Chapel on Dartmoor has the unusual distinction of being a major centre for printing Christian braille literature in Indian languages.

"We found a terrible shortage of reading material in the Indian languages", explains Steve Brown, Manager of the Compass Braille Press in Moretonhampstead, which started production in May 1990. "Without suitable braille texts, blind people in India have little direct access to the Bible." Steve and his wife, Janette, visited India on a fact-finding tour two years ago with Tony and Rona Gibb, founders of India Fellowship for the Visually Handicapped. The Fellowship is an evangelical charity which runs Christian retreats and teaching centres throughout India in the local languages, and is the distribution organisation for Compass Braille.

All four were overwhelmed with requests for brailled scriptures from individuals, schools and Christian groups, thus confirming their belief that a new press was needed for India.

"What an experience seeing India was!", says Steve enthusiastically, showing me round the crowded print shop. "It was marvellous to actually meet the people who will be distributing the Bible portions we are to produce." Finding the necessary funds and launching the project was an act of faith in itself, and Steve admits he had doubts to overcome about its viability. He also had the hard decision of leaving his full-time job as Chief Engineering Instructor at the Royal National Institute for the Blind's Rehabilitation Centre in Torquay for an uncertain future managing Compass Braille.

Matters have fallen out providentially, however. Much of the expensive printing equipment was given or sold to Compass Braille at reduced prices, and Steve found temporary work to tide him over the financial difficulties of the early months.

The rest of the equipment used by Compass Braille has been funded by donations. The computerised Braillo 400S embosser, which produces 600 braille sheets per hour and was specially made in Norway, was the most costly item at £52,000.

Only modern computer technology, as yet little known in India, could begin to produce the necessary volume of braille Bibles. Since India is estimated to have ten million visually-handicapped people, the potential readership for Compass Braille's texts is enormous.

The problem of siting the new press was solved when a Moretonhampstead couple offered their disused chapel. Renovation, which included strengthening the floor for the new press and constructing offices in the upper gallery, was completed early in 1990. The chapel retains most of its original features, including high pointed windows, but is decidedly “hi-tech” inside. Gone are the pews, computers and other hardware having taken their place.

Working in the chapel (a most appropriate place for a printer), Steve prints, trims, collates and binds. He also packs and dispatches the braille books, which are posted free of charge as “articles for the blind”.

The volumes, which cost just over £4 each to produce, are free to the recipients. Most of the cost of braille scriptures is met by the United Bible Societies, but Compass Braille will have to foot the bill for any other Christian literature it brailles.

Working on his own, Steve can produce around fifty volumes per day. He also enjoys the voluntary backing of his wife, Janette, who types the correspondence, and a new assistant has recently joined them. Accountant Caroline White and Sue Relf, Treasurer of Fellowship for the Visually Handicapped, deal with financial matters. Help with producing the cover boards for the braille books is being given by prisoners from Dartmoor.

A chain of volunteers around Britain have been busy typing computer texts in Indian languages. Before these are forwarded to Steve Brown, they are proof-read and then converted into programmes to drive the Braillo printer. This is done by one of Compass Braille's key people, Professor Don Rogers. A retired university lecturer, Professor Rogers has his own miniature Braillo machine at home. He is concentrating on the national language of India, Hindi, but is also working on Gujarati and Marathi.

At the time of my visit last year, Steve was printing seven Biblical books, with hopes of later producing the whole Bible in fourteen Indian languages. The ultimate aim of Compass Braille is characteristically bold--to braille the Bible in all Asian languages.

  • ifts for Compass Braille can be sent to Mrs Caroline White, 38 Court Street, Moretonhampstead, Devon, TQ13 8LG. Further information from Mr and Mrs A. D. Gibb, Sunnymead, Exeter Road, Moretonhampstead, Devon, TQ13 8LG.

Comment

Patience, patient

A plea for more awareness on the part of the medical professions

Why do so few professionals seem able to understand how to help and communicate with people who are both deaf and blind? Lack of understanding on the part of doctors, consultants and nurses has turned out-patient visits into tense and fraught experiences which make the deaf-blind patient feel inhuman and stupid. A stay in hospital can be even worse. Recently I found that this lack of understanding and knowledge of how to help extends to other professional workers, such as physiotherapists.

I had been suffering limb pains for a long time, and my GP referred me to the physiotherapy department. After an initial assessment it was decided that I was to have two sessions a week in the pool doing exercises before going on to exercises on other apparatus.

I am profoundly deaf and registered blind with a very small field of vision, so communication is difficult unless people speak clearly and slowly and are in the right light for me to lip-read. I can do the deaf-blind manual, but have yet to meet a professional medical worker who knows it. I also have a balance problem which means I can't walk alone without support.

As my husband was working and I had no one else to take me to hospital twice a week, it was agreed that I would be collected by the hospital car service. I explained to the person arranging transport that in view of the communication problems, and because I can hear nothing while the car engine is going, it was essential that whoever was to fetch me was aware of the difficulties or misunderstandings which could arise. Fine, I was told. I would be allocated to the same person every time so we could get used to each other and they would be fully acquainted with my difficulties. No problem! The first day I waited by the door, anxious to ensure I did not miss the driver. When she arrived I opened the door to her and then turned to pick up my white cane and my bag. When I turned back she had gone! I was able to make my way to the front gate using my handrail, but I could only hope she would be waiting outside.

I could not see to know which car she had got into, and there were several parked outside. Then my cane knocked against an opened car door, so I assumed it was waiting for me and felt my way in. Only then did the driver realise I was visually handicapped. I explained about my deafness and mobility problem. She had not been told about these either. A good start!

My driver left me in the waiting room at the hospital. I wondered if I would hear when they called my name. After a while, an assistant came along and called a name. As no one else moved I asked if it was my turn, and she nodded and went quickly away down the corridor leaving me behind. Great, I thought! I called after her, and when she came back I explained I needed to take her arm, as I could not walk unaided and in a strange place I could not see enough to attempt it. "Oh yes", she said, "I remember now. They said you were deaf!"

Inside the hydrotherapy room I changed into my swimsuit. I had already explained that when I took out my hearing aid I would not hear anything, and as my eyes are so weak the glare from the tiles, water and lights made lip-reading very difficult. I was led to the pool, "where the physiotherapist was waiting. She began to talk to me. No good, I would have to have my aid on! This was fetched and she explained what would happen.

The physiotherapist would have about six other patients in the pool as well as me. Usually she would call instructions to them. She had never worked with a deaf-blind person before, and was unsure how it would go. I had to tell her that she would need to lead me in and out of the pool, and use touch to make me know what movements she wanted me to make.

At first it was a bit hit and miss, but when she got the hang of it she was really very helpful. She walked me to the spot where I was to work and then started me on exercises, moving my legs and arms to show me what I had to do. She came back every so often to start me on new exercises.

I felt rather nervous at times, especially when as in one exercise I had to use plastic rackets, moving them from side to side and then up and down. I was worried I was going to give somebody a whack with them, but luckily nobody came too close!

One day, at the end of a session, the physiotherapist led me out of the pool, and I held on to the hand rail as usual. As I moved along, the feel of the rail suddenly changed from firm metal to softness. Feels like flesh, I thought. Then there was hair under my hand and I realised I was pushing somebody's head down! I can only think that the physiotherapist's attention had been temporarily distracted, so she did not notice she had led me close to where someone else was exercising. My hand had moved along the other lady's arm on to her head and nearly pushed her under Luckily, the lady laughed about it good- naturedly.

Getting people to guide me properly was quite a problem. Everyone wanted to take my arm, while I preferred to take theirs. They all shouted at me, which was embarrassing and only made communication worse. They kept moving things like my clothes or my wet swimsuit, and I had to feel around to find them as there was never anyone near to ask. The other patients chatted together during the rest periods, but I was totally ignored and felt very isolated.

In spite of all that had been said, on my second visit a man arrived to fetch me. He stood behind me, grasped both elbows and marched me in front of him. I felt dreadfully nervous and asked him to let me take his arm. "Fine", he said, and I did, but after he closed the gate he again grabbed my elbows! Reaching the pavement, he shouted "Three steps up". Odd, I thought, wondering what sort of car this could be. The sun was so bright I couldn't see anything that day. Up I got, and it was only when I was placed to sit sideways that I realised I was in an ambulance!

The hospital car service did not work for me. My sessions only took about half an hour, and I would be waiting around hours to be picked up again. There was a different person most times, and none of them knew about or understood my difficulties, so it was rather stressful. Eventually I obtained help from our local volunteer bureau, and this worked much better--I usually had the same driver each time, and we got used to each other. The physiotherapist also got used to me and we communicated quite well, but the assistants never got the message of how to help at all.

After about eight weeks in the pool I went on "dry land". There I did exercises on a couch or on various pieces of equipment. That meant a change of physiotherapist, and I had to explain again how we could communicate. This one tried hard enough, I think, but always managed to place himself in the worst light or would wait until I was lying face down before deciding to tell me something, so then I had to get up again to look at him to lip-read what he was saying! One reason for my difficulty with him was that he was himself visually handicapped, and he tended to assume I could see (or not see) what he could, without realising our visual problems were quite different. He also relied a lot on his hearing for cues and could not remember that I could not hear.

It is a great pity that all members of the medical professions aren't taught awareness of the problems deaf and visually-handicapped people face. The special needs of the deaf-blind would also be more recognisable then. As it is, patients with a dual disability have to endure a lot of stress in getting any form of treatment.
”Anne Roberts”

Letters

Guide cane comfort

Guide cane users may be interested in the following remedy, should they at any time experience any discomfort to the palm of a hand from the pressure caused by the “capped” end of their canes.

Fit--as I did recently--a rubber ferrule (the type fitted to wooden walking sticks) over the white plastic cap on the guide cane, and so provide a “cushion” on which to lean if need be. The smaller size ferrule fits perfectly and can also have its “pimples” removed with a sharp blade should the individual user so require.

Perhaps the RNIB might produce such a fitting to accompany future supplies of guide canes?
Peter Ryding, Orientation & Mobility Officer, Shropshire Social Services, Birmingham

Braille Radio & TV Times

George Wood (“Letters”, June), raises some interesting points about the “Braille Radio” and “Television Times”. I am sure he will be delighted to know that no charge will be made for the edition of “Braille Television Times” which arrived late. I am sorry some information he requires is not given, and, ideally, a larger publication would seem the best answer. However, as a keen amateur musician, I certainly require all the information given about Radio 3's programmes, and I sincerely hope RNIB will continue to serve blind musicians' needs in this respect. Compared with the price and content of the print “Radio Times”, the braille edition would seem to be poor value for money. Yet this is surely due to relative cost of production in braille as against print, rather than a dastardly plot deliberately to give braille readers an inadequate product. I'm grateful for what we do get, but hope it will be improved.
Richard Foster, Crowborough

Esber Yagmurdereli

Over the months, you and your readers have shown concern and support for the Turkish prisoner of conscience Esber Yagmurdereli.

I thought you might like to know that in January of this year Mr Yagmurdereli was made an honorary member of British P.E.N. He has since been given an award of 10,000 dollars by the Lillian Hellman and Dashiell Hammett Foundation in New York for his contribution to literature.
Angela Barber, Chichester

Travelling in London

I decline to engage in a slanging match with Mr John Wagstaff, but the quality of his contribution, on behalf of London Transport, to your June issue can be judged by his claim to be unaware of two modifications to the Rottweiler gates--an experimental “touch and pass” system and the large, brightly-illuminated signs at Regent's Park station indicating which way the gates are working.

I am glad about his comments on damned screens at Baker Street (and the new edict from the board of London Transport), but what he says about the former does not accurately represent the position there, which I have carefully assessed on two recent occasions. I have no doubt that Mr Wagstaff will agree to meet me at the station for further consultations.

I, like many others I hear from, continue deeply to mourn the death a year ago of dear Kate Shelley, and I wonder what she would have thought about the continued “jam tomorrow” response about on-train announce ments. She first raised the matter with Mr Wagstaff more than ten years ago, by which time they were already provided on the underground in Sao Paulo!

Once again, London Transport must stop bashing visually-handicapped passengers--including at least once literally, judging by the letter from one in your last issue who claimed to have suffered an unprovoked and serious assault from a bus driver. However, the responses I have had to complaints about bashi bazouk-like treatment in connection with Rottweiler gates suggest that the assault, even if substantiated, will be of as little interest at board level as my previous letter to you. Oh for a latter-day Ashfield or Pick--or both!
Kenneth R. Whitton, London W1

Computers at work: Making computers work for you

Sue Hitchcock of the Employment Development Technology Unit at RNIB concludes the series with a survey of electronic braille systems

Electronic braille systems form one of the three major methods of access to computers available to visually-impaired people. The other two methods--speech and large character display programs--have been discussed in previous articles in the series.

This final article will look at types of braille systems currently on the market, the differences between them in terms of functions offered and methods of use, and finally the areas of work where a braille system might be a more appropriate system than, for example, a speech device.

What is electronic braille?

The other names given to this technology—“paperless” or “refreshable” braille displays--are closer to describing it. Because braille cells are made up of dots, we can get rid of the paper usually used and represent the braille on a strip of plastic pins instead. If a pin is up above the surface of the strip it represents a dot, and if it is below the surface nothing is felt.

By using electronic controls and grouping the pins into cells, we have a system of “refreshable” braille. When you have read the information from the display, you simply ask the computer to advance the next set of characters. The pins move, new braille characters are formed instantly and you read the new information.

Types of electronic braille devices

Electronic braille systems fall mainly into one of two categories: 1. self-contained or stand-alone portable devices; 2. systems that connect to a standard personal computer (PC) and provide a braille representation of whatever is on the PC's screen at any one time.

Stand-alone portable devices can really be placed in the category of electronic notebooks, ie devices that provide some form of inbuilt word-processing facility. These systems offer braille users a means of creating and storing notes and other documents and then transferring the information to a PC if required, or printing it out on a standard printer or a braille embosser.

The second type of electronic braille device is the sort that attaches directly to a PC. These braille devices usually consist of a braille display unit which sits underneath the PC keyboard. The display unit consists of a strip of electronic pins and also a number of function keys. Some display units are also designed to attach to commonly available portable computers.

What are the major differences between devices?

Clearly, one of the major differences is how the braille display is actually to be used--will it be primarily used as a stand-alone notetaker or is it to be used with a desk-top or portable (laptop) PC?

Electronic or mechanical?

This refers to the pins that form the braille cell on the display. These can be either mechanically or what is known as piezolectrically operated. The latter are usually more expensive, but are generally reckoned to be far more reliable since there are fewer moving parts and hence less to go wrong.

20, 40 or 80 cells?

The braille display pins are grouped together to form a row of usually either 20, 40 or 80 cells. 20-cell strips are only found on portable, notetaker type devices. Braille displays that attach to a PC tend to consist of either 40 or 80 cells. As a standard PC screen will display up to 80 characters on one line, it follows that an 80-cell braille device will be able to read an entire line of the computer at once. Similarly, a 40-cell braille display will give information on half a line at any one time.

The degree to which an 80-cell display is an advantage over a 40-cell one depends to some extent on the layout of the information displayed on the PC screen. For example, the ability to read a full line at once can be advantageous with complicated screen layouts--perhaps where the PC is running spreadsheet or accounts software in which much of the information is likely to appear in columns of numbers. Using a 40-cell display in this example would mean having to use left and right hand controls to move from one half of the screen to the other, which may be less flexible and slower.

8 dot or 6 dot display?

Normally, characters are represented in braille with a combination of 6 dots. Most electronic braille devices, however, make use of 8-dot braille cells. The extra 2 dots are designed to provide information about particular attributes displayed on the screen that are not apparent to a blind person, such as upper case letters and use of colour. Some braille displays, for example, make use of dot 7 to distinguish between upper case and lower case.

Another method, common to many electronic braille devices, is to have a separate block of three or four “status cells” for showing such information as underlining of text, change of colour, position of the cursor and any special signs.

How easy is it to move around a computer screen?

The usual means of moving from one part of the screen to another on a PC is via the cursor. As you type in information to the computer, the cursor shows you where you are on the screen at any one time. Blind users need not only to know where the cursor is but also to have a means of knowing what else is on the screen without necessarily having to change the position of the cursor. Most electronic braille displays use one of the above-mentioned status cells to show the position of the computer cursor, and other function keys to enable you to scan the screen away from the cursor. Many displays have an additional set of touch switches above the braille cell strip which enable you to bring the computer cursor to the point on the screen where you are browsing so that you can then begin to edit if required.

Braille or speech?

Most electronic braille displays will cost somewhere between £3,700 and £9,400. A speech system may cost as little as £450. Why, then, use a braille display rather than speech?

The answer to that question may depend to a large extent on what type of program the blind user will be using on a PC. For example, computer programming is clearly an occupation where great accuracy is essential. It is often crucial whether a word is typed in upper or lower case. An electronic braille display will provide that information instantly, whereas a speech system would have to be customised to do this. Similarly, the layout of a program on the screen can be important, and again braille comes into its own for providing accurate information about what is happening on the PC screen.

Braille would also be chosen in a situation where the user has difficulty using speech output --because of hearing impairment, for example.

Sources of information

  • Information on particular electronic braille displays can be obtained in a factsheet entitled “Paperless braille devices”, available from RNIB Employment Development and Technology Unit (071-388 1266 extension 2248)

News

Westminster Round-up

On May 15, Dudley Fishburn, the Conservative MP for Kensington in Inner London, introduced a “Ten Minute Rule” Bill the aim of which is to co-ordinate the design and planning of street furniture. During his speech, Mr Fishburn highlighted the daily problems facing blind people as a result of badly placed and/or unlit signposts, bus stops and shelters, lamp-posts, kiosks etc. His proposals included the reduction of the number of signposts, and he recommended that more than one traffic sign could be placed on a pole or possibly attached to houses--an idea which could be extended to lights. Mr Fishburn also raised the idea that local authorities should co-ordinate the design and colour of the street signs in their area, thereby not only making it easier for blind and partially-sighted people to recognise them but also giving the streets a more uniform look.

Unfortunately, it is very unlikely that the Bill will progress further. Ten Minute Rule Bills (the MP is allowed ten minutes to introduce the Bill) are allotted very little Parliamentary time, and none has ever been known to succeed. However, it was a useful opportunity to raise the concerns of visually-impaired people on the issue.

On May 20, the Secretary of State for Education and Science, Kenneth Clarke, presented to Parliament two White Papers, entitled “Education and training for the 21st century” and “Higher education--A real framework”. Government proposals on further education (FE) include: the transfer of FE and sixth form colleges from local authority control to central funding; the opportunity for Training and Enterprise Councils (TECs) to manage the Careers Service; the introduction of national vocational qualifications; and, for 16- and 17-year-olds leaving full-time education, Training Credits. Contained in the “Higher education” document were recommendations for: a single funding structure for higher education establishments; the distribution of public funds for teaching and research; and the establishment of a quality control unit.

The lack of reference in either paper to the special needs of disabled students raises a number of questions. After FE colleges have been removed from local education authorities (LEAs), will blind and partially-sighted students continue to have the use of the LEA visual impairment services? Will they continue to meet the leisure needs of visually-impaired adults and the community care needs of multi-handicapped visually-impaired adults? FE colleges are to be funded through a national funding council. How will this affect the chances of disabled students obtaining funding for places at residential colleges? These and many other questions are being considered by a Working Group set up specifically to study the implications of the proposals outlined in each White Paper. The Working Group, which was established in March when the Government first publicised its intentions, includes representatives from Skill (the National Bureau of Students with Disabilities), RADAR, RNIB, RNID and the London Boroughs Disability Resource Team (see article “Further education” right below).

A major factor in the decision to transfer FE colleges from local authorities to central government was the Government's desire to reduce the Community Charge, which it proposes to replace in 1993 by the Council Tax, to be based on the value of the property, with just one bill per household.

Exemptions from the Council Tax will be applied to, amongst others: severely mentally impaired people; 18- and 19-year-olds who are either in full- time education or in receipt of child benefit; patients resident in NHS and certain other hospitals or who are receiving care in nursing and care homes, private hospitals and hostels; and residential care workers who are on low salaries.

RNIB has submitted a response on the Council Tax proposals highlighting the need for the Government to take account of the fact that many blind and partially-sighted people are on low incomes or benefits. We will also want to ensure that information on the new tax will be available in accessible formats.

ACT NOW, the group of disability organisations (including RNIB) working towards the implementation of the remaining sections of the Disabled Persons Act, is planning to stage an event on July 8 to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the Royal Assent to the Act.
Helen Friend, Parliamentary Assistant

Further education--A missed opportunity

The Government's latest White Paper on Further Education is a missed opportunity and a backward step, according to a consortium of major organisations representing students with disabilities and learning difficulties.

Removing the further education colleges from local education authority control would remove the commitment to assess individual needs and provide special support, says the consortium. It argues that the White Paper has ignored the opportunity to establish crucial rights for students with disabilities and learning difficulties, and calls for

  • the right to extend education up to at least the age of 25
  • the right of a newly disabled student to at least two years' funded further education
  • the right to special support, enabling access to mainstream courses
  • the right to be funded in integrated or specialist colleges, at the choice of the student
  • the right to a full assessment of needs and achievements.

The consortium is hosting a conference for organisations concerned with further education on July 1 at RNIB in London. It will examine the White Paper and explore its impact on disabled students.

Deborah Cooper, Director of Skill, said: "In the past, education legislation has ignored the needs of students with disabilities. This time disability should be at the top of the agenda."

Deaf-blindness in Wales

People who are both deaf and blind in Wales are missing out on vital services, because their numbers and particular needs are not recognised by local authorities, according to a new report commissioned by Sense, the National Deaf-Blind and Rubella Association.

The report estimates that there are over 1,149 deaf-blind people living in Wales, yet no authority has an accurate record of the numbers in its county. The report states that: "Apart from in South Glamorgan where policy statements were in draft, there was no written policy underpinning services for deaf-blind people, no budget . . . and no guide help service in any county."

The report, researched and written by Dr Billie Shepperdson, of the University College of Swansea, reveals that many Welsh authorities attempt to cater for the deaf-blind people they know of within services designed for other groups such as elderly or physically-handicapped people or those with learning difficulties, or those who are either blind or deaf. These more general services do not address the very specific needs of people with impairments of both sight and hearing. As a result, deaf-blind clients miss out on disability allowances, aids, equipment and contact with people trained to help them live life to the full.

The report urges all Welsh local authorities to appoint an officer to be responsible for the needs of deaf-blind people in the area. It also advises the Welsh Office to require local authorities to produce statistics on the numbers of deaf-blind people in their counties, so that specific services can be planned.

Commenting on the report, Rodney Clark, Chief Executive of Sense, said: "Once again, Sense has found that services for deaf-blind people are sadly lacking. I urge health and local authorities to work with Sense to put the recommendations of this report into practice, in order to improve the quality of life for all deaf-blind people in Wales."

  • The report, “A study of the numbers and needs of people with a dual sensory impairment in Wales”, is available at a price of £7.50 from Sense, 311 Gray's Inn Road, London WC1X 8PT--tel. 071-278 1005.

National League of the Blind and Disabled: Campaigning for equal opportunities

"A small but unique trade union of disabled people campaigning to achieve equal opportunities in all aspects of life, full integration into the community and fulfilment of their own aspirations."

Thus Michael Barrett, General Secretary, describes the National League of the Blind and Disabled in the introduction to the League's Report 1991, which was submitted by the National Executive Council to the 30th Triennial National Delegate Conference, held in Blackpool last month.

Mr Barrett recalls that the National League of the Blind, as it was known then, was established in 1893, but the membership soon realised that if they were to achieve any progress for blind people they would need the support of the trade union movement. The League registered as a trade union in 1899 and was affiliated to the TUC in 1902--a move they have never regretted, says Mr Barrett. In 1968 the union opened its membership to include all people with disabilities.

Looking back over the period since the last conference, held in 1988, Mr Barrett observes that he can do no better than repeat the words of the Executive Council's report to that conference:

"The past three years have proved to be very difficult years for the League. Its members have had to campaign hard to stop the continuing threat of closures of sheltered workshops; to stop the cuts in benefits to those disabled people who are unable to follow employment; and to try and eradicate discrimination against disabled people seeking employment in the “open” employment market."

Over two-thirds of NLBD members work in sheltered workshops, points out Mr Barrett. The recent consultative document on employment and training for people with disabilities, together with the closure of several workshops over the past three years, have caused them to become extremely concerned as to their future.

"Whilst they acknowledge that a great deal more has to be done to create better opportunities within the open labour market, they are acutely aware that sheltered workshops have provided reasonable, if not greater, employment opportunities."

NLBD has recently been active, along with other organisations, in the campaign to persuade the Government to address the real financial needs of people with disabilities. There is considerable anger and bitterness, says Mr Barrett, over the new Disability Living Allowance and Disability Working Allowance, which are felt to be an inadequate response to the needs of disabled people, and over the refusal of the Government to hold proper consultations and dialogue with the representative bodies of organisations of disabled people.

In 1986, the League carried out a far-reaching review of its financial affairs and internal structure. This has not been a painless process, says Mr Barrett, but has been acknowledged to be a necessity by the membership, with the majority wanting to see NLBD reach its 100th anniversary as an independent registered trade union in 1999.

  • “Report 1991” to the National Delegate Conference is available from the National League of the Blind & Disabled, 2 Tenterden Road, London N17 8BE--tel. 081-808 6030. A report on the conference will appear in the League's newspaper, “The Advocate”.

Liverpool: New society "springs from the ashes"

When the Liverpool Workshops for the Blind ceased trading before Christmas last year, an 82-year tradition was ended. But the new society which has "sprung from the ashes" reports that the Workshops did not close in an atmosphere of depression, because all the blind and disabled workers went on to full-time jobs thanks to the skills they learned at the centre.

John Ayres, Chief Executive of Liverpool's new St Bernard Society for the Blind, says that "integration is the best thing for blind people, who almost always benefit in the long run. And this goes for the severely disabled and the totally blind too." Despite Merseyside's economic depression, the Liverpool Workshops were an outstanding success story in the latter 1980s, says Mr Ayres. The employees became more professional, more productive, and their contribution almost doubled. It was a massive turnaround. They were given real opportunities." But he adds: "I think it's better for them to be going to work in a real world. They can hold their heads up very highly and say “We are working in a real world with real opportunities.”"

In an effort to help maintain employment prospects for blind people, St Bernard's Society for the Blind has provided £10,000 worth of equipment to organisations willing to engage disabled people. The new society is also involved in providing a range of services, including holiday and sports opportunities for blind people, and is fund-raising with the aim of building sheltered accommodation and community facilities.

Leicester: New centre for disability and the arts

Rachel Sullivan writes:

Sir Richard Attenborough, who spent his childhood in Leicester, has given first his patronage and then his name to the recently created Centre for Disability and the Arts. Over one and a half million pounds is needed to house and extend the Centre. On July 4, at Leicester University, Sir Richard will launch the national appeal for funds.

From the early 1980s when a course of sculpture for blind and visually-handicapped students began, the Centre has developed research projects, training courses and exhibitions and has extended its concerns to include a wide variety of disabilities and arts.

At the heart of the work is the realisation that many people with disabilities are unnecessarily barred from the arts and that alternative ways of learning can be found which will open up new opportunities.

Touch learning is one such way. With little or no sight, how do you approach the “visual” arts, and how can you “make your mark” aesthetically? Teachers at the Centre have discovered that it is possible to develop a profound understanding of objects and of sculpture through a disciplined and directed use of touch. The sense of touch is not magically given to people whose sense of sight is lost. It must be found and it can be refined and directed, and the results are not only very fascinating works of art but also a chance to understand forms in nature, ideas about space and perspective and even philosophical concepts. A video project for people with hearing loss is exploring another area of creation and perception, and the Centre is anxious to pursue more deeply the potentialities of music for the deaf and dance and drama for those who are normally excluded from such pursuits.

The primary aim of the Centre is research in concrete terms. To find out what is possible and to publish those possibilities means that other people can make use of the insights. Training courses for museum staff, teachers and carers help to make clear what can be done and how to do it. A travelling exhibition called “Finding Form: An exhibition of sculpture to touch” is travelling around a dozen museums, and it is based on work from the Centre.

The future looks exciting. Sir Richard's words-- "Disabled people not only gain tremendously from the arts, they have a phenomenal amount to give, Failure to involve them diminishes us all"--both inspire and energise.

New chief for American Foundation

The new President and Executive Director of the American Foundation for the Blind, Carl R. Augusto, assumed office on May 6, succeeding William F. Gallagher, who has retired after nearly forty years in the field of blindness and low vision.

Announcing the appointment of Mr Augusto earlier this year, Michael M. Maney, Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Foundation (AFB), said: "As a blind person who is a leader in the blindness field as well as an active advocate in the community at large, Mr Augusto is extremely qualified to spearhead the efforts of AFB as it meets the challenge of the 1990s and beyond."

Mr Augusto, who is 44, goes to AFB from the Cincinnati Association for the Blind, where he was Executive Director for six years, managing an annual budget of over seven million dollars and a staff of 140 employees. Earlier he served in various staff and management positions with the National Accreditation Council for Agencies Serving the Blind and Visually Handicapped, and as Director of NAC he was responsible for evaluating services and practices of agencies and schools for the blind nationwide.

In a feature on Mr Augusto, The “Braille Forum” (organ of the American Council of the Blind) says that he is

"unafraid of hard work and incredibly long hours. ... Augusto says that he learned long ago that the only way to ensure his own efficiency with files and record-keeping was to manage everything in braille; his personally created organizational system is indeed impressive, as is his ability to put a hand on any relevant fact or figure at a moment's notice. Probably of greatest appeal to those around him is his knack for making others feel important and his total ease with his own blindness."

Carl Augusto himself is quoted as saying:

"I hope I can make a substantial difference for blind people over time. One of my concerns about our field is that we haven't done a very good job in educating the public about blindness and the capabilities of blind people. I think we can do a better job. The statistic that 70 per cent of all working age blind people are unemployed is unconscionable, and I'd like to see us have some part in introducing legislation to remove disincentives in the social security system and find other ways of improving the situation. I'm going to spend a lot of time just listening and learning from blind people, from AFB board and staff and other providers to help us figure out what direction AFB should be taking to tackle these and other challenges"

As Executive Director of AFB, Carl Augusto will oversee an organisation which serves as a national clearing-house for information about blindness in America, promotes educational, rehabilitation and welfare services, conducts and stimulates research, trains professional personnel, publishes information about blindness, manufactures Talking Books, and develops and sells aids and appliances.

In Brief

Cash for deaf-blind children

RNIB is urging local authorities to make use of new cash allocated to improving education for deaf-blind children.

The Government recently announced an Educational Support Grant of £2 million, available for the financial year 1992-3. RNIB wants the money to be used effectively by local authorities--to improve staff training and to help establish special units for an estimated 1,200 deaf-blind children in the UK.

Said Paul Ennals, RNIB Director of Education and Leisure: "This money is a vital opportunity for local authorities to support deaf-blind children, whose needs have been overlooked for far too long."

Getting equipment

“Equipment for disability”, published in April, is a short summary of the Disabled Living Foundation's comprehensive reference work “How to get equipment for disability”. Its chapters include a two-page summary of “Equipment for visual impairment” with a chart to illustrate the various stages of referral by which the visually-impaired user may acquire the equipment. The booklet is intended as a pocket guide for people with disabilities and their carers and for a wide range of professionals.

  • It costs £2 per copy (up to 10 copies), £1.50 per copy (between 11 and 20) and £1 (over 20).From Haigh & Hochland, The Precinct Centre, Oxford Road, Manchester, M13 9QH--tel. 061-273 4156; fax 061-273 4340.

Your benefit

RNIB has produced a new edition of “Your benefit”, the guide to social security benefits for visually-impaired people.

The booklet details in a clear and concise manner the main benefits that can be claimed. It includes up-to-date information on the Community Charge and two new benefits, the Disability Living Allowance and Disability Working Allowance, which will be introduced in April 1992. It will be available in four ethnic minority languages, Hindi, Urdu, Gujarati and Bengali, later this year.

  • The cost of the booklet is £1 for individuals and £2.50 for organisations. Copies can be obtained from RNIB Benefit Rights Office, 224 Great Portland Street, London W1N 6AA--tel. 071-388 1266 extn 2335/2336.

New Playwrights

New Playwrights Trust is a unique national trust for new writers at all stages, and anyone interested in the development of new writing. It has a particular remit to promote and encourage work by writers whose work is under- or mis-represented in the industry.

Among the services of the Trust is a newsletter giving details of writers' conferences, competitions, grants, workshops, courses and job opportunities. NPT now intends to record the newsletter on cassette tape, and this service will be free to members with visual disabilities. The tape will be sent by direct mail-out.

  • New Playwrights Trust is based at Whitechapel Library. Contact Ben Payne, Administrator, New Playwrights Trust, Whitechapel Library, 77 Whitechapel High Street, London E1 7QX--tel. 071-377 5429.

Lothians

Visually-impaired members of the Lothian Coalition of Disabled People have identified a need for a local centre where printed material can be submitted and put into the format required--braille/tape/large print/moon.

Before progressing further with the project, the group is seeking feedback from potential users of the service.

The questionnaire is being distributed to as many visually-impaired people in the Lothians as possible, in whatever form they wish.

Anyone wishing to answer the questionnaire by telephone should do so as soon as possible by ringing the Coalition office, 031-220 6855, from 10 am to 4 pm.

Glaucoma project

Backing to the tune of £50,000 from National Westminster Bank has enabled RNIB to go ahead with research into the prevalence of glaucoma amongst Afro-Caribbean people in the London Borough of Haringey.

The project is being carried out by the Institute of Ophthalmology to establish if glaucoma is more common among Afro-Caribbean people, as recent research from the United States suggests.

Approximately 2,000 people above the age of 35 will be taking part in tests, and the results are expected to be published next year.

Braillers for New College

Pupils at RNIB New College, Worcester, are to be provided with additional braillers thanks to a £50,000 donation by the Masonic Trust for Girls and Boys to help RNIB's Looking Glass Appeal. At present the school provides one brailler per student, which means that students have to carry them around the school all day. The money donated will enable the college to provide braillers at every workstation, including the library and study bedrooms.

News Extra

“Foresight” for children in Cornwall

Phil Coleman writes:

On Saturday 11 May an event occurred near Truro that will immediately affect over forty families in west Cornwall. It was the inaugural general meeting of Foresight, a support group for families with visually-impaired children.

Foresight, born last year, has been quietly growing into a group which is now ready to help, advise and support families with blind or partially-sighted children, particularly those in local, mainstream schools. It is the brainchild of Mrs Margaret Baillie, Head of Services to Visually Impaired Children in Cornwall. Parents there are becoming more and more frustrated at the lack of financial and other support given to their children in schools, and this frustration is shared by their special needs teachers. Foresight intends to do all it can to improve services, as well as support families.

Already there are posters at key points around the area, advising parents who need its help of their nearest Foresight contacts. When parents first hear that their child has sight problems, just talking to experienced parents can help a great deal. Sometimes it is months (or even years!) before their local social worker hears of their child. This is something else Foresight is trying to change, but meanwhile it can support, advise and help them.

The group is arranging trips out for families, so that they get to know one another personally, and their visually-impaired children can find out that they're not on their own. A trip to Newquay Zoo is in the offing, and trips to the beach and countryside will surely follow.

Foresight will be affiliated to the Look National Federation of Families with Visually Impaired Children; and will work with it to improve the provisions for visually-impaired children, locally and nationally, by:

  • enhancing their education, welfare and leisure opportunities
  • improving co-operation between all those serving these children.
  • For more information contact the Secretary, Mr Phil Coleman, on Truro (0872) 41174.

Obituary

Frank Hill

Don Hart writes:

Bristol & District branch members of the Guide Dogs for the Blind Association will sadly miss their dear friend Frank Hill, who overcame his blindness to lead a full and active life.

Born in 1913, Frank moved to Canada when aged 12. He later learned his trade in the family bakery business, returning to England in 1933. With one eye already failing, he joined The Gloucesters as a territorial, and to pass A1 he covered up the same eye twice!

Following demobilisation, Frank became a Master Baker and was commissioned to make a three-tier wedding cake for Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip, with an invitation from The Lord Chamberlain to attend an afternoon party at St James's Palace.

In 1956, for a change, Frank and his wife, Margaret, became landlords of a pub in Mitcheldean, Gloucestershire. Two years later, with Frank's eyesight deteriorating, they returned to Bristol. Whilst working in a paper factory he suddenly lost his sight completely.

Frank joined the Workshops for the Blind in 1962 and acquired his first guide dog, Kelly. The work didn't suit him and he quickly learnt braille and typing. The next eighteen years were spent working for Bristol Commercial Vehicles, using a braille micrometer. His second guide dog was Sandie, to be followed by a large black labrador/Great Dane called Ruthy. She retired at 11, and he retrained with Yussef.

Sadly, in 1967 Frank lost his wife, but twelve years later he married Phyllis, with whom he lived happily until his death. His son Spencer died in 1988, and his daughter, Sheila, who fell in love with Canada,. still lives in north Vancouver.

Frank was a very caring man and his warm personality and endearing character made him loved by all. He was at his best when in the driving seat, and became founder chairman of the National Federation of the Blind, Bristol branch, and founder chairman of Avon Talking Magazine. He contributed to the Radio 4 “In Touch” programme and regularly broadcast on Radio Bristol.

Frank held the Chairmanship of the GDBA, Bristol City & District branch, for some twelve years. Over 70 people attended his funeral, including representatives of GDBA Exeter and eight guide dogs with owners lined the procession.

Frank died of cancer, and family and friends are relieved he is now out of pain and at peace, but he will be sadly missed, and rich memories of him will live on.

Leisure for All

What is touch? A Highland approach

I. K. Russell, who is Principal of Fieldwork Services at the Highland Society for the Blind, Inverness, reflects on the experiences which led to the formation of a group devoted to exploring the art of touch.

During the last six months I have been trying to answer the question “What is touch?" According to “Odhams Dictionary”, to touch is "to come into contact with, to perceive a sense of feeling, to handle slightly, to meddle with, to effect, to impress, to move, to soften, to delineate slightly, to strike". (The next word defined is “touched”—the definition being "not quite sane, unbalanced!)

My real interest in touch came about rather recently, after I had worked in the field of visual impairment for some seventeen years without exploring areas of touch or analysing my own verbal contribution in touch situations. During autumn 1990, the Highland Society for the Blind organised the visit of a group of visually-impaired people to the “Sense of Touch” exhibition then being held in the Hunterian Museum in Glasgow. We also visited the Burrell Collection in the same city, where we handled a number of exhibits using fine cotton gloves and toured the outdoor exhibition of large bronze sculptures by Henry Moore.

The sinuous, organic lines of a Henry Moore abstract--on show at the exhibition in Pollok Country Park, Glasgow, which was visited by the Highland Society group last autumn--seem to invite touch. Yet limited tactile exploration alone may not be sufficient to allow a visually-impaired person to appreciate it.

At the end of the weekend I realised that something was missing, but could not put a finger on what it was. Earlier I had attended the European Blind Union Conference in Glasgow, where a number of presentations were given on tactile maps, cathedrals through touch, tactile museums and exhibitions and the like.

My next experience was when asked to speak on local radio about fourteen modern abstract sculptures on display in the Centre of Inverness. This, I think, was the turning point. Trying to describe two of the sculptures on radio was impossible. Their names meant nothing to me because they were abstract--they gave me no idea of the sculptor's thoughts when he was creating the particular work of art. One small bronze I described in the following two ways: "a bird table on stilts"; and "a pagoda on top of a lift- shaft". But both were wrong--they were my verbal thoughts. Finding that neither through thought nor touch could I verbally communicate what each sculptor had in his mind, I changed direction in the interview, asking the interviewer: "If an apple, or orange, or lemon, or grapefruit was placed on my hand, how would I know the type of object it was?"

Answering myself, I said: "First of all by using my tactile sense--squeeze the object, feel its weight, explore the texture. Then probably I would use smell. If it felt safe, I might taste or even bite the object, or shake it to see if it rattled." When I went in to work the next day, a member of staff thought that I was 'touched'. For this was the start of thinking about the art of touch (rather than art to touch).

Will this article have the same effect on you? About this time, a colleague and myself became aware of the Touch and Art work being done by Rachel Sullivan and her colleagues at Leicester University, mainly related to art. We decided to form an Arts & Touch Group in Inverness, to explore both areas--for I had realised by now that our experiences in Glasgow revealed that the visually-impaired members of the group had not been taught to touch. A similar revelation was produced by a drawing by a young blind child of a bus, which appeared a few years ago in the “New Beacon”. It consisted of two steps, a hand-rail and a seat. Nobody had verbalised to that child the form of a bus, or allowed him to explore one.

Over the last five years the Highland Society for the Blind has run a number of holidays. On an outing there is a steady stream of information about the countryside, the history, architecture, as well as the local flora and fauna of the area, verbalised by a sighted guide in the group. This gives a pictorial image in situations where tactile senses cannot be used. One can indeed use verbal communication to good advantage.

One incident happened on the Holy Isle of Iona, on a cold day with horizontal drizzle. Everybody, though impressed with Iona and its history, was feeling rather down, until the party was told how lucky they were to have been blessed at least one thousand times. All rain that falls on Iona has to be holy water.

You may think I digress, but how do you know when your shoes are full of water? “Tactile” does not just mean the sense of touch in hands and fingers, but everything touched by the body. This experience was a highlight of the holiday--wet though we were.

Other parts of the body are used daily for touching by sighted people. A person may caress the cheek with a silk scarf to feel the texture. Another will use an elbow to gauge the temperature of baby's bath water.

I am convinced that emphasising the sense and use of touch is important and should be a fundamental part of our work with visually-impaired people. This must be allied with information giving: that is, facilitating the learning process by putting relevant information into context, both for large objects and items that cannot be conceptualised by size, distance, printed detail etc. This in itself is an art, and must emanate from the information giver, or facilitator, having a large knowledge base and being able to communicate that knowledge in a way that the recipient can consume.

Until very recently, and probably still in certain museums, it has been an anathema to touch exhibits. A lot of them are displayed in glass cabinets. Throughout Europe there are vast resources and efforts being put into tactile ideas and projects, be they maps, cathedrals, paintings or museums. Who, though, is teaching the blind or partially-sighted person the sense of touch? Should not teaching people to touch come first, before all the tactile material is made available?

This is not to say that all of the other senses may not have to be used: namely residual vision (where appropriate), hearing, taste and smell, as well as touch. Last year, when my family visited the Yorvik Centre in York, I realised that if one could not hear or smell a great deal of information would have been missed. There were scents of middens and rotting fish. The sound effects of a small village were very effective. For visually-impaired people a facilitator would also be necessary to complete the picture. How otherwise would one have known that a dog was peeing against the wall of a wattle house? All of one's senses should be used where appropriate.

Apples make a good example of the way the senses can be used. Each variety--Discovery, Cox's Orange, Granny Smith, Golden Delicious (what lovely names to roll off the tongue!)--has its own distinctive shape, colour, smell, texture, density and feel. The flesh also has a different taste, texture and juiciness. What sense describes juiciness? You only know that a Cox's Orange is ripe if the pips rattle.

In this country we have been brought up in a culture which does not touch. Touched items may be broken or get dirty. Touching is frowned upon. We only shake hands if we have to. We rarely kiss or hug others. How many readers have touched or hugged a dead body? When did you last use your tactile sense to discover the facial characteristics of a friend who is still in the land of the living? Some areas of touch, such as the erogenous zones of the body, are even taboo subjects for conversation.

Last year, after listening to an address by Drena O'Malley on how information to deaf-blind people is censored by the information giver, I became aware that the same is the case for any severely visually-impaired person. A lot of information can only be put into context by verbalising it. And information is censored by the information giver, however inadvertently.

One can only relate to objects by using one's own knowledge base, which in some areas can be small but in others large. For a congenitally blind person, the knowledge base in certain areas can be non-existent. In the field of touch, it is no good saying that a vase you are describing is from the Louis XIV Period if the blind person is not able to put that knowledge into context. The information giver has to talk in a language that the receiver can understand.

What do the sighted see? A person I know works in an office surrounded by plants, some of which shrivelled up and died before he realised that they had not been watered. A sighted person can be very blinkered, and a bad provider of information to complement the information available through touch. A facilitator should therefore be carefully chosen and carefully trained.

The eye is an extension of the brain, which receives all of the messages from the five senses. Is it possible to transfer messages lost to sight to the other senses, and ally this with verbal communication to allow blind and visually-impaired people different experiences? The goal would be a sound knowledge base for the visually-impaired person, and an ever-increasing comprehension not just of the arts but of the world at large.

But to reach this goal, both the visually-impaired person and the sighted interpreter will have to learn new skills. In the fullness of time I hope that the group formed at the Highland Society for the Blind will be able to provide help to other groups interested in this theme.

Royal Academy

Gioya Steinke reports on the 223rd Summer Exhibition and on the “access day” [July 8]:

How long does it take to touch 90 pieces of sculpture? This is the amount available this year for the visually-impaired visitor to the Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy. So it is certain that there must be something amongst all these that will give pleasure and interest for every taste.

I had a field day, finding many personal favourites and unknown oddities. Bearing in mind that choice is a varied and personal matter, I will still venture to mention the ones that proved a “good touch”.

Don't miss the sculptures in wood. Such a joy... especially “Phoenix. Dying elm. Series 11”. Placed at floor level, easy to get around, it is a twisted tree-trunk shape of points and knobs, hollows and places to explore, smoothly carved in elm by F. E. MacWilliam. Many a sighted visitor followed me to touch this one!

Willi Soukop's “Plant life” series, and his well-known heads and figures (all in wood) are extremely tactile. I'm told that though his sight is fast deteriorating his work is getting even better. Ted Roocroft contributes yet another of his delightful “Sows”. This year it's the “El Greco sow” that invites her back to be scratched and almost grunts in pleasure. It smells pleasantly of the wood it is carved from. (This caused some amusement when I was caught sniffing at the piece.)

Tiny pieces are always a delight to handle, especially when they are in scale and so delicate in detail. Included in the show are the exquisite “Rolling horse” and his lovely little legs and hooves, the ballet dancer's small hands behind her back, and many others, all requiring the lightest of touch from the finger-tips.

In contrast to this is the life-sized “Leonardo's dog”--sitting on his mat at floor level, easily accessible and very pattable. I was surprised to find this was by Dame Elizabeth Frink, as I had just been reaching high to touch her enormous “Desert quartet lll”--a giant of a head that one would have liked to have lower in order to go over the huge bare skull. Another “giant”, the robotic figure of “Daedalus on wheels”, is easily recognisable as the work of Sir Eduardo Paolozzi. Like his sculptures or not, it's fascinating to explore all the bits and bolts and sense the strength in his figures.

As always, the Summer Exhibition will produce the full range of reaction and expression, and is one of the conversation pieces of our “summer”--apart from the weather. I enjoyed my “touch-in” session enormously.

I did not have the time or energy to look at the pictures, though the odd splash of colour did bounce off my vision every now and then. I shall reserve this for the special Access Day for disabled and visually-impaired people on July 8. This day--mainly intended for blind and partially-sighted people and co-ordinated by professional consultant William Kirby--is proving to be a highlight for many of us, and thanks are due to the RA's Education Department.

If you visit the exhibition, you will find large print lists for the sculptures that can be touched at the reception desk. Labelling is in raised clear numbers and in braille. An experimental booklet of tactile plans of the Academy is planned and should be available by Access Day (it can also be mailed out in advance of a visit to the Academy for any exhibition).

  • The Royal Academy is in Piccadilly, London W1V 0DS (between Green Park tube station and Piccadilly Circus). The Summer Exhibition continues until August 18. For details about Access Day and special facilities, contact Alexandra Scott, Education Department, Royal Academy--tel. 071-439 7438.

Vision without sight

Josephine Wilson writes:

From April 30 to May 3 this year, the Maison Francaise in Oxford was host to an exhibition of blind photographer Evgen Bavčar's work. Although Bavčar took up photography only five years ago, his work is acclaimed in several European countries, and in 1988 he was named official photographer for the Paris “Photography Month”. Born in Slovenia, Bavčar has lived in Paris since 1972 and is a professional researcher in the field of the philosophy of art. He has armed himself with a formidable knowledge of photographic technique, and this, together with his method of perception by sound and by guidance of assistants--notably his niece Veronika--has enabled him to show to sighted people things they might never otherwise have seen.

Bavčar lost his sight as a result of two separate accidents at the ages of 10 and 11, after which he lost the ability to see even light.

The exhibition consisted of twenty-six images measuring approximately 12 inches by 8 inches, blu-tacked directly onto display panels. When my slow procession around it began to be accompanied by the soft plop of prints hitting the floor I wondered whether Bavčar was perhaps making some point about his prints as physical, tactile, even aural objects. As I was alone for most of my visit I had to rescue them myself and press them back into place. Did Bavčar request that his work be presented in this way?

In one image, a solitary figure is seated on an enormous flight of stone steps which descend into the water at the quayside of a seaside town to touch the shadow of a cable which reaches back into the foreground left, where the shadow of the photographer gazes out. The picture is so composed that the rising line of the cable is balanced by the tilt of the seafront's line of trees and shops sinking into the right half of the image, the line of the artist's perception reflected by the line beyond it.

A very different waterside figure is a stone masthead gripping a wooden pole in the foreground, so close that one can feel the deep grooves in the hair, the worn, algae-covered spatulate fingers and the backward or inward-looking eyes as, by an immense effort, the figure heaves an expanse of water around itself, and the ripples of the background lash out into the long, dark, muscular waves near the figure.

Some of the most disturbing images were posed in a studio. In these self-styled “vues tactiles” (touchable visions), the distinction between image and reality is questioned. In one such image, a long-haired model sits with eyes closed while a ghostly hand circles in front, seeming to drag down her face and hair.

Bavčar has said: "For the sighted the starting point is brightness, for the blind darkness", and many of the images were taken in darkness. In some of these, bright points and graffiti-like shapes of light are focused on the face and bodies of models, so intense that they seem to burn there. In others, the relationship is reversed: instead of using light as a decoy for his subject, the subject is used as a decoy for the light. White paper cutouts in the shape of birds or stars circle enticingly in the darkness of Bavčar’s shooting range.

But in one image, Bavčar allows himself to be completely ravished by light. His niece Veronika, dressed as an angel, looks down on the sea from a stone wall, only the crown of her dark head visible above a pair of fluffy wings whose edges merge into the whiteness of the water. Rising from the lower right corner, ivy-clad silver-barked trees arch over in an intricately detailed canopy and frame the melting pot of whiteness beyond. One feels the crisp edges of the cut rock of the wall on which the angel leans. No horizon, but a faint line of birds, a single-masted boat, the slightest hint of ripples on the water's surface.

In this magic, Bavčar has set up--between the tactile details of the trees, the unseen but verbally present gaze of the angel and the whiteness of the sea--a three-part visual counterpoint, a shimmering vision to which he adds his own voice.

    Josephine Wilson is arts development worker for Shape London in Wandsworth.

  • Photography summer school: At the time of writing, there are still some places available on the summer school on photography for people with visual impairment. Contact Mrs Françoise Vassie, Short Course Development Officer, Centre for Continuing Education, The King's Manor, York, YO1 2EP--tel. 0904-433900.
  • See also “Cannes do” under “Diary” right below.

Diary

Gohar Kordi

To be a Kurd and a woman in Iranian society is not to experience the most privileged of lives. When blindness is added to this, low status is further undermined. Yet one woman whose extraordinary story has just been published demonstrates just how such severe disadvantage can be triumphantly overcome.

Gohar Kordi was born in a small Iranian village to a Kurdish mother and a Turkish father, and became blind at the age of four. When the family moved to the capital city, her father put her out on the street to beg.

A short story, “From missionary school to Mitcham” (to be published later in an anthology, “So very English”, and launch her writing career) tells something of the ups and downs of Gohar's youth. Having fought to obtain an education for herself, she was eventually to become the first blind woman at university in Teheran, doing more than survive in a society in which she was a minority among the minorities.

Gohar Kordi now lives in London with her English husband and eight- year-old son. Having been “discovered” in a creative writing class at London's City Lit, she has just published her first book, “An lranian odyssey”, which had the distinction of being featured in last month's Feminist Book Fortnight and being the subject of an ICA/Guardian conversation.

  • The book is available now from bookshops or through the publishers, Serpent's Tail (8 Blackstock Mews, London N4 2BT). Both braille and Talking Book versions are also planned, and will be available from RNIB in 1992.

John Hull: “Touching the rock”

In June of last year we published an address given by John Hull at the service of dedication for the new “Touch and Hearing” centre which had just been opened in Gloucester Cathedral. We also took the opportunity to review his book, then recently published by SPCK, which consists of a series of meditations on the experience of sight loss.

“Touching the rock” belongs to that category of book which enters quietly into the world and gradually builds for itself a solid reputation and a wide readership. It has now been published in the United States as well as in the UK, and is going into translation in various European countries and in Japan. Last month it was relaunched in a new English edition published by Arrow Books, with a foreword provided by Oliver Sacks (the neurologist and author whose book “Awakenings” has been turned into an acclaimed film of the same name, now on release throughout the country). Dr Sacks describes the work as nothing less than a masterpiece.

The excellent “Everyman” film about John Hull and the experiences recounted in his book, broadcast last month on BBC 1, should do much to promote “Touching the rock” and help to carry it through the barrier which often confronts books about blindness trying to enter the mainstream and reach a general audience.

Rather than repeat our enthusiastic remarks of last June, we conclude with some extracts from a review of “Touching the rock” sent to us earlier this year by Jane Kearey, who teaches religious studies and psychology at Bristol Grammar School.

"Recently I spent three days in the Bristol Eye Hospital with my young daughter, who was having a small, “routine” operation to remedy a squint in one eye. All went well, and we left the hospital cushioned and nurtured by the warmth, efficiency and tolerance of the hospital staff.
"My minor drama was forced into a fragmentary corner of the collage presented by the varied, and sometimes tragic, images of other lives passing me by on the hospital ward: a young mother, pregnant with a fourth baby, two of whose children (both under five) were almost certainly blind, with an hereditary disease carried through the female line, affecting boys only; a little girl, waiting for adoption, whose squint operation was twice delayed--once by the consent form's remaining unsigned by a parent, then by an asthmatic cough the evening before the operation ....
"In what the psychologist C. G. Jung would no doubt have called “synchronicity” (meaningful coincidence) I was reading at this time John M. Hull's moving and disturbingly honest account of going blind, “Touching the rock”. John Hull, Professor of Religious Education at the University of Birmingham, describes, minutely and intimately, the way blindness affects perception--of oneself and others. “Blindness”, he says, “is like a huge vacuum cleaner which comes down upon your life, sucking almost everything away. Your past memories, your interests, your perception of time and how you will spend it, place itself, even the world, everything is sucked out. Your consciousness is evacuated, and you are left to reconstruct it, including a new sense of time, a new realisation of the body in space and so on. In that situation, there is likely to be a dramatic revision of priorities .... One begins to take up residence in another world.”
"This world of the blind, as John Hull shows us movingly and religiously, is a world where thoughts, sounds and touch recreate the order most of us rely on sight to provide. But the memories of faces loved and now unseen, the looked-for reciprocity of a smile unmet, and the casual unkindnesses of the sighted, mean that the struggle to find God in the blindness is a struggle with pain, suffering and loneliness. The fact that John Hull achieves this “jurneying into God”is a mark of both hiscourage as a human being and as a Christian ....
"In the past month, in company with the sighted and the sightless, and in reading John Hull's book, I feel I have been blessed with “insight”- insight into a human being's quest for meaning within the darkness, reason within loss, and God, beyond the shadows."
  • “Touching the rock--An experience of blindness” by John M. Hull is published by Arrow Books at £4.99. A braille edition of “Touching the rock” is available on loan from the National Library for the Blind. It is also available as a Talking Book (TB 8158, RNIB Talking Book Service) and on C90 cassette from Calibre, Aylesbury, Bucks, HP22 5XQ.

Cannes do

A film about a blind photographer and the friend who describes his work to him sounds an intriguing prospect.

Unfortunately, we can report no more about it at present than what the newspapers haye told us: that it received an ovation when it opened the Directors' Fortnight at the recent Cannes Film Festival.

The film, called “Proof” and directed by Jocelyn Moorhouse, was made in Australia. Whether or when it will hit our UK screens, large or small, is hard to predict. But in the mean time, if any of our readers in Australia (or elsewhere) have a chance to see it, we should be very grateful for your review.

Guide dogs and German “Notgeld”

R. Underwood writes about a collectors' item which demonstrates the contribution already made by guide dogs in the years following the first world war.

At the end of the first world war, Germany experienced a growing shortage of small coin as metal was used to pay off the debts imposed on Germany by the Treaty of Versailles. This meant that the populace had difficulty in making small purchases, since there was often no low-value coinage available.

To overcome this problem, many small towns and villages started to issue low-value notes intended for circulation only in a very restricted locality. These notes were referred to as “Notgeld”, or “emergency money”. They were usually only valid for a short time--most commonly three months.

Although strictly-speaking they were illegal, the notes were tolerated by the authorities because otherwise all small trade would have been brought to a standstill. Within a very short time, thousands of Notgeld notes were appearing all over Germany. Because of the short period of validity, new notes had to be brought out frequently, and this led to the development of many different designs. It was found that people were keeping notes as souvenirs, rather than redeeming them--effectively making a donation to the issuing authority, usually the local town council. To encourage this practice, notes began to be issued in attractively designed sets. There are now many tens of thousands of Notgeld sets still in existence, and the Red Cross series from Oldenburg, in North Germany, is a typical example.

The set consists of six pieces, each good for 50 Pfennig and valid for three months. The front of each note has the legend “Deutscher Führhund für Kriegs-Blinde”--German Guide Dogs for the War-Blinded. In the central oval is an Alsatian (or German shepherd) dog wearing a Red Cross medallion. On the left and right are a seated and walking man respectively, each with a guide dog.

The backs of the notes show six different aspects of the life of the working blind man, assisted by his faithful hound: going to work to earn his daily bread (a factory scene); being guided safely (a traffic scene); being protected from danger (a quayside scene); being helped up and down steps; being led without error; and having an attentive and friendly servant.

The colours are black, grey and red on a white background. Although the design is fairly crude, it is nonetheless effective in putting across the message about the contribution made by the guide dog to the independence of its owner.

Content author: ann.lee@rnib.org.uk

Last updated: 20/10/2008 15:51

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