| Description | Interviews with Iris Otley, staying at the pre-vocational training centre at Torquay, and Miss Price, a teacher.
Interview with Iris Otley from Selby, Yorkshire. She discusses her opinion that there should be other training centres, as well as the one at Torquay, to alleviate the problems of travelling long distances and time spent apart from family and friends. She also talks about the need for more training opportunities for women. She describes the rehabilitation work she has done at Torquay, her own reliance on touch to carry out activities such as cane work and pottery, and her enjoyment of activities traditionally not open to women, such as reading braille micrometers. She discusses the development of her sense of touch and her awareness of using touch for recognition from an early age, her opinion of 'do gooders', her confusion about people's dislike of others touching them and the practice at the centre of touching people to see what they are like, known as 'having a braille' (tracks 1-4).
Interview with Miss Price. She talks about her work background with people with disabilities, her work in blind welfare as a home teacher and at Torquay. She describes the activities she teaches at the centre, including tandem cycling, handicrafts, housework, and braille. She talks about some of the handicraft design work she does, her previous employment designing toys and the limited opportunities to train in the manufacture of handicrafts. She discusses the enjoyment that people who have attended the centre at Torquay have gained from being able to do craftwork and her interest in working with people from a variety of backgrounds. She considers the suggestion that blind people should be integrated more into wider society and talks about the things she has learnt from residents. She gives details about some of the games and puzzles that she has developed for educational use with blind children learning braille, that both blind and sighted people can play (tracks 5-7).
Total: 33.24 mins
Dubber's reference number: PLA KF565D0764380 |