| Description | Interviews with several people at the pre-vocational training centre at Torquay.
Track 1: Interview with an unidentified man who talks about his experience of general disability, having seizures and his feeling of uselessness, and overcoming his fear of his complaint. He talks about the need for sighted people to show the right kind of sympathy and understanding, without smothering 2.12 mins
Track 2: Interview with an unidentified man who discusses the advantages for people who have lost their sight later in life, who often have industrial experience 1.14 mins
Track 3: sound effects of voices, conversations, people walking with canes 0.43 mins
Interview with Val Southern and a woman called Jennifer from Tidworth, Hampshire. Val Southern talks about the self-taught mobility techniques she uses and the difficulty in finding people to teach her methods of getting about, the lack of help she has received from sighted people in big cities. She agrees to talk about her views on the long cane and makes an arrangement to talk to Philip Donnellan about this (tracks 4-6).
Track 6: Interview with an unidentified man from Wales. He talks about his mobility and orientation and his work in the theatre 1.01 mins
Track 8: sound effects of voices, conversation, people guiding new arrivals at the centre 7.32 mins
Track 9: sound effects of voices, conversations between members of staff 0.46 mins
Interview with Iris Otley from Selby, Yorkshire and Elsie Condon from Woolwich. Iris talks about the techniques she uses to light a cigarette, her use of touch to assess Charles Parker's age and her perception of his height and other physical characteristics. Elsie joins the conversation to talk about her assessment of people by their voice and how difficult it is to judge people's ages. Both women talk about their friendship and Iris talks about losing her sight, the treatment she has had, her previous job as a nurse and her experiences at the centre. Elsie Condon talks about losing her sight as an adolescent, the effect that her condition has had on his job in the army and her hopes to get a job as a telephonist after her assessment at Torquay and further training at Pembridge. Iris Otley talks about her ability to interpret information by touch, the need to get used to mixing with people, the importance of touch to blind people and her opinion that sighted people don't cultivate touching skills. She discusses the changes that her loss of sight has effected, particularly the realisation that she and many other blind people have greater sensitivity in their left hand to read braille and carry out other tasks, and talks about the things she misses (tracks 10-14).
Total: 36.38 mins
Dubber's reference number: PLA KF571E0401080 |