| Description | Interviews with staff and people staying at the pre-vocational training centre at Torquay.
Men and women staying at Torquay, including Edmund Thomas, Nicholas Brown, John Darsley from Bournmouth, and an unidentified man from Scotland, discuss salaries, prospects for their future employment, work-related problems because of their condition, difficulties with using braille micrometers. John Darsley talks about his previous jobs, his illnesses, and the loss of his sight. He talks about the support of his family and incentives to keep going (tracks 1-4).
Interview with Lee Farmer from Chicago, United States of America, instructor on a training programme for orientation and mobility instructors. He talks about his aim to discipline people against the tendency to panic, to believe that they are not victims. Charles Parker talks about the need to get over to sighted people that blind people have a use in society; because they have to learn new techniques they expand the human spectrum. Lee Farmer talks about formalising techniques to teach blind people to use other senses (tracks 5-7).
Track 8: Interview with unidentified man who talks about losing his sight through diabetes and the confidence he has gained at Torquay. He discusses his limited prospects for future employment with his engineering firm 2.13 mins
Track 9: Interview with an unidentified woman who talks about her previous job as a secretary for a petroleum firm in Poole, Dorset, the loss of her sight in one eye, and her hopes for future employment in an office environment 2.28 mins
Track 10: Interview with Cyril Daye, from Hitchin, Hertfordshire. He talks about his previous jobs and the effects of his loss of sight on his ability to work. He expresses his feelings about sighted people who try to help blind people across the road and says that he doesn't like 'being led round like a dog'. He thinks that sighted people don't know what to say to him, and he feels embarrassed about not remembering people's names 3.40 mins
Track 11: Interview with Marianne Steele, from Otley, Yorkshire. She talks about her loss of sight and her difficulties in doing her clerical job. She talks about trying to learn typing at Torquay and the uncertainty about her future employment and financial situation 2.36 mins
Track 12: Men and women staying at Torquay, including Edmund Thomas, Nicholas Brown and John Darsley, talk about wanting to work, the kinds of wages they can expect in different areas of the country. Nicholas Brown talks about the low salary he can expect in a job as a press operator in Nottingham and his worries about how he will support his family when he leaves Torquay 5.00 mins
Total: 32.47 mins
Dubber's reference number: PLA KF549C0062380 |