Disabled student Diaries 2009 (BBC Ouch!)

If you've not yet seen it, over at Ouch! we're pretty chuffed with our three students whose diaries we're following.

Charlotte, Lee and Andrea have all just started at university. They each are likely to have different experiences as they each have different impairments.

Go to: Disabled Student Diaries 2009 @ BBC Ouch!

Charlotte is quadriplegic, Lee has a tasty mix of Asperger and Tourettes ... whereas Andrea is visually impaired.

At Ouch! we remember our student days and we take our hats off to them.

When I remember how many things were going on at once in my life back then, I wonder how I dealt with it all.

So. Lets take Charlotte. She's 18, she's always lived at home with her family as primary carers. But she's decided to up sticks to get the independence she craves. It's such a big deal for her because when her A-level results came out ... what's that, around August 20 ... she had NOTHING in place. No assistants, no equipment, no nothing - it's the way we do it here in the UK it seems.

So she's moving home, dropping her long term parental care and needing to get three carers: meaning she's now an employer with payroll, health and safety and insurance responsibilities. Sheesh it's enough to put you off leaving home, isn't it? And yet, at the same time she's starting a new life a few dozen miles away in a town she doesn't know, where she as yet has no friends, and is also taking on a degree to boot.

OK. I'm 39. Back then if anyone had attempted to praise me for doing same I would probably have been a bit annoyed: "it's nothing special, are you being patronising?" Charlotte and our other students are taking on far more than your average student ... and lets hope the system is there to help them achieve it.

I left university in 1994, just at the point that everyone was beginning to start understanding .co.uk and .com language and "if it's got an @ sign in it, it's an email address". My god I'd have loved a computer back then. I couldn't even read a newspaper. I was so darn tech impaired and even the smallest bit of study was so time consuming.

Library studies? Personal development through reading round my subject? Pre internet, it was so far from my experience as a blind person I didn't even really think to do it! I had some DSA money which I used as effectively as I could but I had no guidance and just kinda felt guilty about taking people's time up and having them read to me.

Confusing times. I'd kinda like to do university all over again but the idea of sitting round in seminars listening to people wax lyrical in that pseudo academic way would probably drive me nuts.

Oh and hello to everyone who graduated from the University of Glamorgan in 1994 like I did.

Timbo and Essex Radio (1982 ish)

When growing up I was always fascinated by radio. I had a 'wristwatch radio' - a massive massive thing - that I used to play Radio One on whilst riding around on my bike. And at night times, I ccame across Radio Luxembourg and was kinda fascinated and weirded out that I was listening to something so far away that was apparently aimed at me. I lived in Kent at the time, born and bred.

In 1982, at the age of 11, I discovered a little bit more about local radio through a friend at high school. There was very little in the way of radio back then.

I was always aware of Radio Medway's existence but never dreamed of tuning in. But my friend introduced me to Essex Radio which had only been on air a few months, broadcasting from Southend just across the Thames Estuary from where I was on the north Kent coast.

I started tuning in and fell in love with it. It felt weirdly glamorous to have your own local station, at the time Kent's Invicta Sound was a good 2 years away from starting its broadcasts.

The programme I really liked was on at 9pm on weekday evenings - The Timbo Show. Timbo (Tim Lloyd) hosted a show where people could phone in, answer quizzes, have a cosy chat and he also played lots of current music. It was on between 9pm and 11pm before his soon-to-be wife Lindsay King rounded off the day on the station.

Listen to the start of the Timbo show - that jingle, oh that jingle. "T I M B O - well here comes Timbo, he's all set and ready to go ..."

At 10pm, half way through the show, he used to play a jingle which was, I think, originally sent in by a listener called Chris. It was The Timbo Rap. I remember all the words in my head ... it's ridiculous. How can I forget important stuff and yet still remember the Timbo Rap? dare I write out the lyrics in full here and prove just how tragic I am? Yeah, OK then.

To the tune of Good Times, that soul classic from the 70s by Chic.

The Timbo Rap - Essex Radio circa 1982

The Timbo Show is quite all right,
two solid hours of sheer delight.
The latest sounds are on the show,
the highlight of the day for Essex Radio.

Mr Lloyd with his dulcet tones,
singing to the music coming through his 'phones,
competitions and quizzes that will blow your mind,
he gives away fanfares, he's one of a kind.

Do the Timbo Rap give your hands a clap,
Timbo's a hero, there's no doubt about that,
give your feet a tap, to the Timbo Rap,
the man who put Essex, on the map.

Essex Radio star DJ,
get out of his way cos Timbo rules OK.
Good looking and handsome or so he says,
you can't deny Timbo's the best.

Get out of the armchair,
switch off the box,
tune into Timbo,
he's the king of the jocks,
if entertainment is what you seek,
listen to Timbo right through the week.

And one more thing before I go,
convert your friends to the Timbo Show.
Phone him on double 8 double 1,
answer the questions, join in with the fun.

Do the Timbo Rap, give your hands a clap,
Timbo's a hero there's no doubt about that,
give your feet a tap to the Timbo rap,
the man who put Essex, on the map

OK. I did it. it's out there. The thing is, if no one else puts it on the web then it'll never get on the web. See what I'm saying? I wonder how many people are now gonna search for Timbo Rap and find this blog entry? Did I get the words right?

Other things about The Timbo Show that I remember.

• Timbo for president - listeners were invited to write in and get a poster to put up in their window.

• I Love Timbo Badge -- I had one of these. Seriously appalling design even for back then ... but huge and I was so pleased i had one! I wore it to school the next day and a) got accused of being gay and b) was told to take it off my blazer by one of the teachers walking down the corridor.

• TPR - Timbo did a series of shows from the front room's of listeners. The show was controled back in the studio by a robot - TPR - Timbo's Production Robot. It sounded like Roadshow Robbo. Where the hell am I dredging these memroies up from? I'm rapid cycling.

• Timbo did a saturday morning show called The Saturday Whatnot. I think children used to come into the studio, more family oriented.

• When the Saturday Whatnot wasn't on, Tim could be heard doing 'The Timbo Roadshow' on a Saturday lunchtime.

• Quizzes on the show include: Timbo stuck in the middle and The Gogglebox quiz (toot toot).

In late 1983 Timbo was moved to lunchtimes on Essex Radio and everyone I know started listening to The Rod Lucas Show on the newly launched Radio Kent (was Radio Medway). And that's a whole other story.

Essex Radio remembered - a selection of those old jingles on the station that liked to be thought of as 'somewhere special'.

Forgive me

I've not blogged in such a long time. Such a long time.

This is largely because I haven't had a working computer. I finally ditched the darn thing which had Vista on it and have 'upgraded' to a netbook which has good old reliable XP as its operating system.

I'm not sure I've got anything to say to be honest. I could blah on about Ouch's budget if you're interested? It's seriously unfascinating but it was what I was, at least in part, thinking about today. As well as working with Emma on our presence at an upcoming big national disability event. . But that's oh so uninteresting to the vast majority of people I'd imagine.

Apparently you can embed your blog into your Facebook presence. Maybe I should do that. So it, um, shows up as Notes or something.

Someone said blogs are dead. Perhaps they are. It's all about the microblogging isn't it?

Anyway, Duties to perform, bed to head to.

OH and if you're interested in taking part in the RNIB's evaluation of a clever new kind of digital SD card wireless talking book player gizmo, then you need to email una.regan@rnib.org.uk and tell her you want to be part of the trial ... and that you're willing to feed useful comments into it. Interesting but RNIB Talking Book surely needs to become a fully functioning download service. Difficult with the copyright, totally appreciate that, but download is how it'll work best surely? Anyway, interesting to see how they have managed to stream talking books wirelessly to this new player thing. I believe it may be called the PTX 1. Are you going to get yourself on the trial? Talking book subscribers with wireless need only apply, I think.

The stock market crash - attrition time

The world's markets have gone into steep decline today. It's scarilly fascinating. Though I remember the crashes of the late 80s and early 90s, it didn't mean much to me personally back then. I was a student. I had no commitments. Got bored when talk turned to money. And back then the government were paying for me to have an extended education holiday - they don't do that any more. I was furthest from caring.

But all these banks and companies biting the dust. It's coming home:

• Are my savings safe? I think so, I believe they're guaranteed by the UK government now (I don't have that much).

• I can't sell my house. I need to move BADLY. And the reason I can't move is because of the original Credit Crunch allegedly brought to us by the US sub prime mortgage fiasco of August last year. My house is most likely to be bought up by a first time buyer yet it's this group in particular who are perhaps least likely to be able to get their hands on a mortgage product right now. Money is less available, banks and building societies taking less risk ... so Damon can't move, can't lock into a new mortgage contract just in cas he is able to sell, and so he is paying the Nationwide's base rate - currently at 2% higher than Bank of England interest rates.

• There are other major personal financial concerns I have which I won't go into ... meaning I could be a thousand pound less well off from this month onwards.

• Dare I mention Salford?

Anyhoo. In one way or another, the new world financial concerns are hitting me this time round now that I'm in my mid 30s, working and with dependencies. IT MATTERS NOW.

But, all that aside ... maybe it's because I'm a news junkie and a student of human behaviour and politics that I am totally fascinated and loving the drama of the news reports. And being as there's personal jeopardy, watching Sky News is giving me the same kind of feeling I get when I watch the grand National knowing I could lose or win my bet.

Certainly it's added a twist. And it's made me take a hard look at what I do, how I earn money, how much I earn, etc. And it's even making me want to take on new and diverse challenges. So any job offers much appreciated.

So tonight I'm sitting down with my girlfriend to plan out our meals for next week so that we spend no more money than we need. I've never had to do this before. It's attrition time.

Accessibility 2.0 frustrations

Just a short comment tonight because it's late. But just wanting to acknowledge the frustrations I've been having in the past few days trying to experiment with a few of the web 2.0 offerings around.

YouTube is in my sights as a bad place right now. But don't get me wrong, I'm not smashing them over the head for this. Read on ...

I setup a YouTube account last year. As it uses one of those verification graphics during the signup process, you know "Tap what you see into the box" - I had to get my mum to help me to setup the account. FYI, she's used to me calling her up now, asking her to logon to her computer, and getting her to try to fathom out weird graphical fonts so I can participate more fully on the web. In tech parliance, these inaccessible graphical password devices are called 'captcha graphics'. They're there for a good reason, to stop automated spamming, but they seriously hamper blind, dyslexic and other disabled people.

Anyway. I said I'd keep this short. So yesterday I had problems logging onto my YouTube account. I went looking around in the Google help pages to see how to solve the problem. It suggested I change my password to try and stop what sounded like a bit of a known issue. Trouble is, yeah you guessed it, I wasn't able to change the password without having to tap a captcha graphic into a box first. Grrr.Oh taste the sweet sweet irony.

I discovered another way round which I won't bore you with. But I was only able to do it because I have a Gmail account - like YouTube, another of Google's products.

Anyway. That's just one issue with YouTube. Video uploading is an accessibility problem too.

Huh? A blind person wants to upload videos to YouTube? Yeah, why blinkin not? I still talk to people who assume I just listen to Radio 2 but it's a totally weird freakout peculiar myth that blind people don't watch TV. In fact, an Action for Blind People survey in the mid 90s showed that about 10% more blind people watched TV than listened to radio. I've not seen more recent figures than that on this subject unfortunately. I think a web trends survey is probably necesary, if one doesn't already exist.

But going back to YouTube and my point about digital lifestyles. If you look at the flash tools YouTube have created, they're actually most of the way there in terms of accessibility. It's just the final tiny hurdle that causes the difficulty. And so I say that we need to enthuse and engage developers ... get some info about disabled peple's digital lifestyles and web habits out there in a bitesize and interesting way.

Anyway. I'm gonna start posting a few more web 2.0 gripes over the next few weeks. But my point is this. Though I think it's good that I put this info 'out there' on the web on a blog (that's the only reason why I'm doing it, it's not just for the purposes of whinging) - blind people, and other stakeholders in disability, and allies, need to start directly approaching the companies. They may not fully appreciate your digital lifestyle and the knockon -on accessibility problems they may have caused. We're building our lives and office communication methods round the web and its services these days, so we can't afford to stay quiet or communicate in an unhelpful way. So we need to feedback directly. And as part of this, we need to use the so-called 2.0 sites to feedback the problem as part of the strategy - in a positive and engaging way!

So. Who's with me for starting a positive proactive feedback group? A mailing list or blog would be a simple start to this idea.

Scripting enabled - my thoughts

I attended Scripting Enabled: fact finding day, yesterday. The organiser Christian Heilmann Did something rather fantastic - his vision was to get geeks and disabled people together to communicate web accessibility difficulties. Tech altruism here. People who wanted to help and learn versus people who wanted real life solutions - many of which are out there, are infinitely doable, it's just about finding a common language and priority list.

There was a second day, Saturday, the hack day where I gather much brainstorming went on. Look at the page and you'll see some plans to be taken forward.

Before I start writing about what I got from the day and how it sparked my imagination, I should just write a little bit about me and what I do first for those of you reading this because I've tagged it -more on that in a bit]

I've been blind since I was a teenager. I use a screenreader called jaws to navigate my computer and the web. I'm a senior content producer at the BBC. This means I am editor of a website, involve myself in issues I know lots about in my department, manage a small team, keep across web trends, and commission projects and work around disability. 'Senior' doesn't necessarily mean I'm old, I should add.

One of my big projects in the last year is to create an accessible Content Production System in-house - there are plenty of websites now thinking about accessibility on their front end but almost no accessible back enhds. So, I have very geeky leanings, know as much as a content producer needs to know, but when it comes to advanced code I know very little but know the general areas, the language and the possibilities. Visually impaired people thus find it difficult to create websites unless they're html coders. Ironically it's much easier to learn HTML and write pages in notepad than it is to find a decent CMS.

So. What did I get from the day. The big theme for me was 'communication', modern communication and sharing. This is where Christian came in and others hit on later in different ways.

The first three speakers Denise Stephens, Kath Moonan and Antonia Hyde all kept banging home the message that there are already solutions, or semi solutions, out there but not enough people know about them. Inevitably little projects, widgets and scripts then get lost on the internet seas, never make it into the real world, and don't help people or get further developed down the right line with user input. I'm kind of extrapolating and building on their ideas here, it seems).

The calls were passionate and interesting and I'm taking it upon myself to try to communicate some of this stuff a little more regularly to readers of the Ouch website - it's the website I am editor of at the BBC. So. That's something positive that I can do as well as hopefully feed back in other ways. Also mindful of Kath's message to me outside the toilets that I put all the geeky stuff in an out of the way place on the site. Moi? Surely not?

Christian the organiser said "if you write about the day on your website or blog, tag it 'scripting enabled' and I'll find it and put it all in one place". Great idea! Social media is amazing. As it gets simpler, it'll help us all find what we want on the web and connect with like-minded people. Once I've written this, I'll tag it on a big social bookmarking site. After getting someone to help me past the captcha graphic last year, I joined the delicious community. It prompted me to download an easy-to-use toolbar so I could help tag the web and build up collaboratively constructive indexes within networks. At the time, the toolbar was not accessible, and I decided to park my social bookmarking ideas. I gather the site itself is much friendlier than its ever been so I'm gonna attempt to tag this blog entry in it later. Am less likely to make the effort to share if it means I need to go to the site itself every time I like a web page and want to tell people about it. Little communicative tools like toolbars tend to be inaccessible. Finding and sharing and being a bigger part of the collaborative web could be assisted with better toolbars somehow. Discuss? Then bigger projects with wider appeal could snowball from there too?

Back to Kath ofAbilityNet. I met with her just before the Accessibility 2.0 conference in Spring '08. She felt it was important for those with accessibility needs to use the social networks themselves to point out their flaws. Like it!

I thought it'd be a cool idea to maybe make the occasional video and upload it to YouTube. A powerful platform to spread the word about accessibility! Interestingly I've not found a very accessible way of getting film off a camcorder, editing it (even editing for sound is most of the way there) but I've not yet found a good simple editing package.or indeed camera that enables easy hook-up. Brilliantly today I've ordered one of these Flip camcorders everyone is banging on about. They LOOK BEAUTIFULLY ACCESSIBLE FROM A BLIND USER POINT OF VIEW> Very few functions, can't flip into another mode too easily cos it's so damn basic, and it beeps to signify recording has started and beeps again when it stops. You can then hook it up to the computer and see it as a drive and whip the AVI file off (I'm assuming the onboard 'send to YouTube with one click' software is inaccessible but my god wouldn't it be brilliant if it wasn't?) Hopefully the uploader on YouTube is accessible now then I can join the rest of the world, be sociable like, on video, share my experiences, be part of conversations, video blog. I've not attempted to upload anything to YouTube for a while. I seem to remember it was a bit hit and miss and was based on a Flash application.

Interestingly when I googled to find whether other blind people had asked on forums for a) an accessible camcorder and b) an accessible video editing package ... I didn't find anything. Is this because blind people don't have a desire to communicate using the big medium most others do? Sound AND VISION? Or what? Warning: don't assume blind people don't want to do it.

We're getting back to communication and talking the same language. Making assumptions is not good. The best way forward, as Christian has said, is to ask questions of the right people. By talking we'll find the right questions to ask and answer. Bridging the gap isn't difficult, it's just we absolutely do need to talk the same language.

Let me give you a bit of an example about a real life bad bit of communication that happened to me last week. I went to a hairdressing salon. My hair had got too long, it looked bad and I knew it. When I arrived, I was introduced to my hairdresser for the day. I expected to just walk to the chair, sit down and have a discussion about lengths and styles and stuff. But the hairdresser, who I'd never met before, started loudly hurling questions at me: "How much can you see? Can you see at all? Can you see me?" I was a bit surprised. "Why do you want to know?" "I was confused, bristling a bit and he knew it! I was just trying to work out how I could help," he said. And I genuinely had thought he was being nosey about my medical condition and wanted to know what was up with my eyes. Two people communicating badly it seems.

Now the great thing with this example is that he felt that by knowing my level of sight, he'd intuitively know how to help me. If I'd said "light and dark" though, would he have been any the wiser? Of course, the best question to ask me would've been "How can I help you". Everyone's different, it's not what's wrong with them that gives helpful indications, it's knowing their access needs. He'd actually embarrassed me in front of the shop by talking to me in the way he did, pointing out my differences very publicly, and tackling an area of my life I don't want to talk about with strangers particularly.

If he'd said: "How can I help you sir?" I'd have said "can I grab your arm and we'll walk over to the chair if that's OK with you". The right question, the right answer, both peple are happy and communicating well.

TO aid in communication, better access and better tools for social media sites are really important. The web is this one big democratic (?) place and when the big areas of communication with each other are tackled, and there are a million ways to do this (Jonathan and Phil talked about something as simple as a spellchecker on online forms to encourage dyslexic people and their views and ideas out of a hole). well perhaps that's a good thing to look at now.

mail me here or leave a comment.

The Saturday Banana - Bill Oddie - my memories

For several hours on Saturday mornings between 1978 and 1979, former Goodie and now Springwatch presenter Bill Oddie hosted The Saturday Banana - another of those kids saturday morning shows unique to the UK that you can add alongside: Swap Shop, Saturday Superstore, Tiswas, The Mersey Pirate, Get set for summer, TX< Get Fresh and Going Live.

Watch Saturday Banana clip on YouTube

There have been so many but few seem to remember this show - live from Southern Television's studios in Southampton, it didn't air in all ITV regions.

Popular myth suggests that the original name for the show was to be The Saturday Bonanza - but for a typo, and misunderstanding from a Southern Televisionn secreetary, we wouldn't have had the hilarious fruit oriented fun.

Oddie sat at a desk in front of a huge, and partially peeled, upright banana that had steps going up the left hand side and a slide down the right. More on this in a bit ... it was at one end of what looked like a massive aircraft hanger of a studio.

Comedy robot Metal Mickey sat at one side of Oddie's desk - Bill would occasionally refer to him. EastEnders Michelle Fowler, Susan Tully, formerly of Our Show fame at that stage, was an occasional co-presenter.

Bill was the linkman between cartoons and various studio based features and interviews.

Probably the most famous feature of the show was its own version of the then very popular kids quiz Runaround - usually seen at teatime hosted by another EastEnder and comedian Mike Reid. 10 kids would be asked a multiple choice question with three answers appearing on the screens. After the presenter shouted "Go" or "g-g-g-go", the kids would run full pelt to position themselves next to their preferred answer. "Runaround .... NOW" invited them kids to change their mind by jumping ship to a different answer. The bright kids could tactically run towards the wrong answer then jump to the right answer later.

If you got the wrong answer, you would go to the sin bin. On the Saturday Banana, the sin bin was at the top of the aforementioned giant banana behind Oddie's desk. The kids would run up the steps and stay at the top of the banana = you could see them through a barred window. Then when it was time for them to rejoin the game, they'd slide down the right hand side and get back to their position.

If you got a question right, I think you'd get an orange ball to put in your perspex tube. If you were the ONLY person to get it right, I seem to recall that you'd get a yellow banana to put in your tube - unlike the weekday version of Runaround where you'd get a yellow ball. Well, it worked something like that.

Now. I seem to remember that Oddie himself presnted the Saturday version of the game but another internet site suggests that it was someone else. I vaguely recall that on one episode of the show they invited a Southern Television exec on to discuss whether or not it was too much to have Runaround on telly in its two different forms twice a week. "Is it too much?" And of course the answer was no.

The Saturday Banana did several features out in the car park area. Do I recall them making snowmen one week? An army tank coming in to show kids what being in da army is like? A band playing out there?

On BBC1 at the same time, Swap Shop was at its strongest; I was mainly a Swappy viewer, though actually the Saturday Banana was probably better on reflection.

One week Swap Shop was rudely taken off air due to a strike at the BBC; it was off for several weeks in fact, replaced by a cartoon lineup. SoChannel surfing I saw Oddie mentioning that Swap Shop was off air so they'd stolen one of their staff. Noel Edmonds-like, he shouted for "Eric!!!!" towards the ceiling. And whaddya know, the spherical perspex bubble that Swap Shop fans knew so well, was lowered down, full of viewers letters. Cheeky but funny!

What else do I remember? Not a lot. I recall that Christopher Reeve's 'Superman' movie was very big around this time ...and they had 'Supernana' fly down from the ceiling.

I seem to remember someone called Clark Kent was interivewed d on the show. He wasn't Superman's alter ego, it was a rock star or something. Still no idea who it was. He put a greenn see-through bag on his head which became part of the title sequence after that - don't do this at home, kids.

Do I remember The Smurfs visiting the studio perhaps? Another website I read suggests they did a live linkup with Capital Radio one week. Who with I wonder - Michael Aspel
was big on 194 at that time, I think.
And of course, the musical Bill Oddie, fresh from having chart hits with The Goodies such as 'The Funky Gibbon' and 'The Mickey Mouse Club' ... well, he sang the theme tune too. "sat sat, saturday banana ...". I believe it may have been released as a single. Very quirky.

Do you remember this show? Can you add anything?