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?

Blind person on Big Brother

Speculation is mounting that there will be a blind contestant on this year's Big Brother TV show on Channel 4.

As a blind person myself, I'm rather excited and can't wait until 9pm tonight to find out if it's true.

I've already blogged a bit about it on the BBC Ouch website: How will a blind contestant fare in the Big Brother house. And there are certainly some unique challenges that he (they're saying it's going to be a bloke) will have to face.

Being as the blind community is quite a small one, I've had a bit of a revelation this morning as to who it might be. When I get into the office at 8:30 I'm going to start ringing around to see if this person is contactable. If he's not, then there's a small glimmer of a possibility that it could be because he's been holed up in a hotel abroad somewhere to avoid the pre-publicity glare and to keep his identity a secret. This is what they have done in previous years on the reality show anyway.

Reading the Big Brother discussion on the Ouch messageboard, I'm interested by responses from the largely disabled postersd

One young blind woman, who herself has appeared on a Channel 4 documentary, is anxious that the contestant is a good role model and doesn't have some of those weirder blind habits. She's referring to rocking and not looking at people when they talk to you.

I understand where she's coming from. Rocking was a phenomenon I'd never come across until I went to blind school after losing my sight at 13 years old. What's it about? well I don't quite know why people do it but this upper body movement seems to happen at times of anxiety or pleasure and could be a comfort thing. God I've never spelled it out in words before and it feels a bit weird or patronising - sorry if you're one of the aforemention, oddly this habit isn't necessarily confined to people who 'don't know any better' - it's just one of those things born of not being able to see yourself. I dunno. They know it's not something sighted people would tend to do, they know it looks a bit odd but if you've been doing it all your life it's a tick that is hard to break.

Anyway, of course it's desirable that our blind person is a good portrayal. I just hope he isn't the kind of person who trots out cliches: see the ability not the disability, I can't see but I don't consider myself to be blind (!), stuff like that. and I dearly hope that the geordie voiceover doesn't start couching everything he does in terms of bravery, inspiration or 'despite being blind'. But I don't think this will happen. The voiceover on BB is minimalist and not judgmental or too directive.

What would I like to see him doing? well I hope that BB does minimalist adjustments to the house: talking microwave, perhaps - a blindie kitchen favourite. But perhaps the most interesting will be his inclusion in the show's tasks.

In the past, some of the tasks have been quite visual. But I can think of many previous tasks that are easily doable. I would expect some tasks to allow for his sight loss though and, if there is a time limit for contestants to achieve their goal, it'd be reasonable to expect he'd get a slightly higher time limit. Just like when sitting school exams: some disabled people might get 150% of the usual exam time, for instance. If I recall, my 3 hour maths exam was lengthened to four and a half hours - which almost killed me but was necessary due to the more manual approach I have to reading and writing and having to keep more in my memory rather than on a notepad or jotter.

Reading comments from some people on various messageboards over the web, it's clear that the nation are ready for a bit of education on blind people. "Oh it's a foregone conclusion, he's bound to get public sympathy and win" a few people have said (paraphrased). Others have focused on the health and safety and, reading between the lines, have suggested it'll be less fun if we have to have a blind person on the show.

9pm tonight then. You gonna be there?

email me on this or other subjects. -or leave a message below. Interested to hear your thoughts.

The Brothers' Lee

Whatever happened to good old fashioned humour like that from the excellent Brothers' Lee - regulars on The Generation Game, London Night Out and other variety shows of the 70s?

I bemoan their loss.

3 grown men doing syncrhonised Tommy Cooper impressions. Priceless!