Isolation; Echolocation

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IN TOUCH – Isolation; Echolocation

TX: 22.06.2021 2040-2100

PRESENTER: PETER WHITE

PRODUCER: BETH EMMINGS

White

Good evening. [Clicking] The noble art of echolocation or using the reflection of sound, the way bats do, to avoid obstacles in your way. It’s a technique we’ve long known blind people use but are we any better at it than anyone else or could anybody do it?

And…

Music - Proms

As we look forward to the Proms, a listener has discovered that the BBC aren’t producing an audio version of their much-loved guide to the annual music festival.

We’re on the case.

But first, this week, one of the suspected, but so far largely unexamined effects of the pandemic, has been the loss of confidence and sense of isolation some people have experienced in the past year. It’s laid bare in a new report from the charity Sense, which reveals the extent to which visually impaired people feel worried about going out and anxious about measures like social distancing. The report’s called Left Out of Life and Richard Kramer is the CEO of Sense.

Richard, I mean, first of all, tell us how did you do your research because we’ve suspected this but it’s not really been spelt out has it?

Kramer

No, it hasn’t. I mean we spoke to a thousand disabled people, including many people with visual impairments, and they told us that they feel much more isolated and cut off from their local communities. Indeed, over half the people, were saying that they were too anxious to go out because of concerns about their health; one in three were worried about complying with social distancing. So, we’re in a position where people’s confidence and independence has been truly lost. And then sometimes people find that the communities are not so accessible or welcoming or inclusive than they should be. And all of these act as a barrier to people and just impact on people’s wellbeing, confidence and independence.

White

Let me bring in Jane Manley on that issue really of people’s attitude – Jane from Surrey.

Just explain, how has your confidence been affected Jane?

Manley

It’s in a variety of ways. Many, as Richard has explained, built around whether I can successfully socially distance and the reaction to people if I walk the wrong way in a one-way area, if I don’t sit in the right seat. Some people, because, I suspect, they probably have their own stresses in this, can be really quite unpleasant or quite sharp, misunderstanding that my guide dog doesn’t read arrows, my guide dog is doing the best it can but we haven’t been out for a year. I have a transplant, so I’ve been shielding and only going to those places where I feel safe. So, my route memory is not as good, my guide dog’s route memory is not as good and it’s those multiple factors that gradually diminish your confidence because everything you’re doing is completely unfamiliar.

White

And would you say that you normally would regard yourself as a reasonably confident person?

Manley

Absolutely. I mean pre-pandemic I was – worked in London, I would be up and down every time in peak times travelling on trains, the Underground. My job, occasionally, required me to fly, so I would take planes to Belfast. I was a fully independent, self-sufficient blind woman. And my guide dog was trained to the utmost to support me in that. My social life also involved travelling. So, I would go and meet other blind and partially sighted friends in London or Peterborough. So, it wasn’t – travelling and moving around amongst people – wasn’t an issue then and I think, also, the general public weren’t as nervous about me travelling amongst them then because, again, they didn’t have any worries about covid.

White

On this issue of attitude, I mean when we’ve talked about this before on the programme, one of the problems of going back out is that the built landscape has changed, I mean things like tables on pavements for eating out, that sort of thing, you’ve fallen foul of that haven’t you?

Manley

Certainly, my experience in a small Surrey town has made what I would call street clutter a lot more of a hindrance. Some of it is because naturally businesses are keen to try and recoup money, so they have more chairs, probably outside the realms of that, that they’re licensed to have. But also, human beings aren’t thoughtful, we don’t always put our chairs back, they might have bags and things laying on the pavement. So, it is much more complicated to move around it. And I have had experiences of people really quite grumpy with me because I’m felt to be too close to them or I’m having to hesitate and work out where to go and that, of course, is then impeding someone who wants to move along the same way behind me.

White

Richard Kramer, it’s one thing to diagnose this problem but what can we do about this, I mean is just biting the bullet and getting back out there actually really the best thing we can do, the best option?

Kramer

There’s a number of options. Some for government but some for individuals and communities. I think government needs to recognise the severe impact the pandemic has had on disabled people. We talk about them a lot, we’d like to see their support being prioritised as part of any national recovery plan. Community services, that are so important, whether it’s day opportunities, social activities or support to get out and about, they’ve been cut over the last year and they must be reinstated. We must ensure mental health support is available to those who need it. But there’s also something more profound. We’ve all been affected by loneliness, it has disproportionately affected disabled people but actually we’ve all been affected by loneliness, let’s make sure we don’t see it as someone else’s problem, let a visually impaired person at a bus-stop know what number bus is coming and when it’s coming; offer a disabled person a priority seat or any seat, that can really help. Loneliness works both ways and so do solutions and there’s a role for all of us – individual, society, communities – to be more welcoming, accessible and considerate of everyone around us including disabled people.

White

We did ask the government for an interview, no one was available, however, they said in a statement: “We recognise this pandemic has been extremely difficult for disabled people, including those who are blind or visually impaired, and have launched a mental health recovery action plan, backed by an additional £500 million to make sure we have the right support in place for people over the next year. And they also said, the national disability strategy we’re setting up soon is going to transform how we support disabled people by addressing the issues they say affect them the most.” We will watch out for that strategy with great interest.

Just very quickly, Jane, what do you plan to do when all the restrictions are finally lifted?

Manley

Certainly, one of my big bucket list ticks is to simply meet up with my other blind and partially sighted friends. It isn’t the same doing it digitally. My guide dog misses her other guide dog friends. So, I just want the ability to be able to travel and socialise.

White

Jane Manley, Richard Kramer, thank you both very much indeed.

And do let us know your thoughts and feelings towards going back out into the world. Are you anxious about it, do you feel you have enough support? Do let us know – [email protected].

Now, so many of our stories come from our inbox and we often rely on you to point out where organisations and institutions are doing people who are blind or visually impaired a disservice and the BBC does not escape that.

Joy Croft emailed:

Croft – email

The Proms guide offers a mine of vital information each year about both booking and background to the Proms but this time, it seems, that the BBC has decided there’ll be no audio version of the guide and for some reason the RNIB’s newsagents are not offering an electronically scanned audio version as a substitute. Of course, that would lack the warmth and enthusiasm of the audios of the past that use broadcasters’ voices but it would give us VIPs all the background available to other Promers in an easily accessible format. Please can you find out why we low vision music lovers are being deprived this year of a treasured mine of information and please would you your best to get it back for us?

White

Well, I’m not sure we’ve succeeded in that Joy. We did ask the relevant people in the BBC Proms to come on and explain why there wasn’t an audio guide this year, they said no one was available but they did send us this statement:

Statement – BBC

We made the decision not to provide an audio guide this year as the number of audience members taking it up in recent years has been extremely small. Instead, we’re providing e-book and, for the first time, e-pdf versions of the Proms guide, which can be read aloud by smart speakers or any screen reader device. Our hope is that this will be more useful to more people.

Well, as for the RNIB themselves, they told us: “For 2021 the BBC only asked for braille guides to be supplied. We’re completely led by the BBC on what accessible Prom guides are offered and it’s their decision on what format to order for production.” And a braille version of the festival guide is available to order in two parts from the RNIB on 0303 1239999. That may not totally satisfy Joy but we did our best.

Last week, we talked about the pros and cons of continuing to work from home versus going back into the office. One of our guests talked about the sense of independence that travelling into work by train gave her. But Mansell Griffiths was in no doubt which working method he preferred:

Griffiths – email

I’ve been working from home for nine months and it cuts out four hours of travelling a day. Far from restricting independence it’s opened up a new world. I can go for a leisurely walk in the morning, or go to the gym, have a cooked breakfast at a local café, then go to work. My evenings are all mine and so are the weekends now. When working in the office all I had time for was getting ready for work, travelling to work, work, travelling home, then getting ready for work again. Working from home has given me a new lifestyle and I actually enjoy my job again, as I’m no longer stressed and exhausted. Travelling to work has resulted in me falling off a train platform and getting knocked down twice by cars. Only minor injuries so far but I can do without it. I calculated that if you total up all the time I’ve taken travelling to and from work, it adds up to two years.

White

That’s a frightening thought. Well, I’m sure the discussion on this will go on as we get closer to coming back into offices.

Now, echolocation has long been recognised as a way of helping people who are blind or partially sighted to navigate the world – do a lot of it myself. If you haven’t heard of it, it’s the idea of using sound and specifically reflections of sound to work out where things are.

The University of Durham has been studying the potential of the technique for some years now and when they told us about new research, we thought we’d better get them back onto In Touch.

Dr Lore Thaler was one of those leading the study and she joins us.

Lore, what is there new to discover about echolocation, don’t we know most of it?

Thaler

We actually do know a lot now but one thing that we didn’t know, for example, was if there is a difference in how people, who are normally sighted, and people who are visually impaired would learn it and what we also didn’t know was how age actually affects people’s ability to learn to echolocate.

White

Now you compared the results to people who’d known how to echolocate for a decade or so, what happened there because you’ve actually tested both sighted people and visually impaired people?

Thaler

That’s right, yeah. So, we trained people over the course of 10 weeks or 20 sessions. So, they came into the lab for twice a week for 10 weeks. And over the course of this they learned. And both people were sighted and people who were blind learned equally well. And we also asked people who had used echolocation for a long time to take part because we wanted to just sort of benchmark our tasks, to know that how well had people actually learned. And so that’s why we had all these different people taking part.

White

So, presumably, you were expecting, were you – I know perhaps academics aren’t supposed to expect things – but surely you were expecting the blind people to do better?

Thaler

Yeah. So, before we started there was a lot of – I think – not just us but many academics and non-academics, to be fair, did assume that people who are blind should learn better, yes.

White

Fascinating, but what does it actually tell us practically, what use should we be making of this work of yours?

Thaler

So, one thing that I find or we all found was a very important take home message because sighted people could learn just as well what this means is that, say, people who might have fully functional vision at this point, but they might, perhaps, later in life lose their vision, if they’re already aware of having a progressive condition they could already learn how to echolocate now and then it might come in handy later. And also, say if people who are normally sighted, say people who work in orientation mobility, as rehabilitation workers, they will train people who are blind in the skill and the good news here is that they can learn this just as well, which puts them in a good position then to pass the skill on, to train their clients.

White

But presumably, this also means that – I mean by far the largest number of visually impaired people are people who’ve lost their sight later in life. Now this should mean that if people got the right training that would help them rather more than maybe we allow it to at the moment?

Thaler

Yeah, exactly. So, the youngest participation in our study was 21 years old, the oldest was 79 and they all learned equally well. So, again, this was something that surprised us because the common assumption would have been that older people may have a bit of a harder time picking it up perhaps but we did not find evidence for that. And so, yes, that would suggest that even people who lose vision later in life, maybe even at quite a – even in their 70s they should be able to benefit from learning echolocation.

White

So, is it your belief then that people perhaps could achieve greater confidence and freedom if they had more expert tuition in echolocation?

Thaler

Yes. So, another thing that was new about our research, we actually – we did the research in the lab and measured how everyone got better but we also followed up with people who are blind after the research and particularly we asked them three months after how they used echolocation in their daily life and how this affected their mobility, independence and wellbeing. And all of them said that it improved their mobility. Throughout, they all said it helped them perceive the environment, orient themselves, determine where they are and 83% also said that, as a consequence of better mobility, they felt more independent and 83% also said that they felt better, so their wellbeing, they felt, was improved because they felt more capable, more independent. And so, yes, learning this skill we feel would benefit people who are blind.

White

Underpinning all this, surely, is an assumption, usually but not exclusively, amongst sighted people that those who are blind are somehow better at this, that the body somehow compensates by giving us, blind people, this extra perception. Does this idea survive your research do you think?

Thaler

The data don’t seem to suggest that this is the case. So, our data do not support this assumption that there would be a benefit of people who are blind having extra resources, extra benefits, extra-sensory abilities in terms of learning this particular skill. That being said, one thing that’s very clear is that people who are blind, they use this skill and people who are sighted, whilst they are performing very well and they can do all the tasks, in their day-to-day life they will use vision. So, I think as time goes on, we wouldn’t be surprised that the people who are blind actually were still to become better and just adapt their skills much more to their own needs and their own lifestyle.

White

Fascinating stuff. Dr Lore Thaler, thank you very much indeed.

And that’s it for today. Don’t forget to share your comments about anything that we’ve covered on the show or what you think we should have covered. Among future plans, we’re certainly hoping to look at whether assistive technology is making the use of braille more scarce, perhaps even in danger of killing it off. We’d love to hear your thoughts on that. You can email [email protected] or you can leave messages, with your comments, on 0161 8361338. And you can go to our website – bbc.co.uk/intouch – where you can download tonight’s and many other previous editions of the programme.

From me, Peter White, producer Beth Emmings and studio manager Tom Parnell. Goodbye.