| Description | Interview with Tom Drake, director at the training centre. He compares the improvements in the welfare system for blind people with his own experiences, the motivation of people who have lost their sight to learn new skills for mobility, reading and employment and the importance of rehabilitation to avoid depression and build confidence. He talks about his own rehabilitation experiences soon after losing his sight and his sense of worth, the sense that sighted society thinks that blind people should not be allowed outside and should spend their time sitting down, and the actual capabilities that blind people have to carry out household tasks and undertake paid employment. He discusses the importance encouraging blind people to develop creative thought and the opportunities created by the training centre at Torquay for people of all ages and from different backgrounds (tracks 1-5)
Interview with Nicholas Brown, a Jamaican man from Nottingham. He talks about the benefits that attending the training centre has given him (track 6).
Interview with Roy Hart from Cambridgeshire. He talks about the loss of his house because his disability prevented him from working and the factors that influenced his decision to come to the training centre, to provide for his wife and children (track 7).
Interview with Tom Drake, director at the training centre. He talks about his own experimentation with the long cane, the development of mobility training in the United States of America and the training course run by Lee Farmer at Torquay. He talks about the 'amateur' nature of much work done with blind people in Britain, discusses his previous career as a psyiotherapist in Liverpool, the events leading to his work as a braille teacher at the rehabilitation centre at Torquay and his organisation of the working programme. He talks about the loss of his sight as a young man in 1931, the lack of opportunities for rehabilitation at that time and his life and interests before becoming blind (tracks 8-9).
Total: 31.33 mins
Dubber's reference number: PLA KF549C0063180 |