Catalogue description CD Rom listening copy

Interviews with Miss Price, a teacher at the pre-vocational training centre at Torquay, and Val Southern, a resident at the centre.

Miss Price continues to talk about the puzzles and games she has developed for educational use by blind children and the potential for expansion of a game based on braille. She explains some of the symbols used in braille. She discusses sharing experiences with staff from other training centres, her conversations with Lee Farmer and her interest in learning more about American teaching methods. She talks about feelings of antipathy about the use of the long cane and gives her opinion about the view that people who lose their sight feel childlike because they have to re-learn skills. She considers whether society treats and educates blind people well and gives her opinion about the greatest needs of people with disabilities (tracks 1-4).

Val Southern from Sheffield talks about losing her sight as a baby and her family background where other members are also blind. She discusses her education and training as a typist, expresses her feelings about the centre at Torquay, the tuition, doing cane work, her opinions about the 'intake week' especially for people who are newly blind and the assessment process. She discusses the reluctance of firms in Sheffield to employ her as a shorthand typist, and describes her understanding of light and darkness and her perception of the world around her, which she has developed from touch and description. She talks about the lack of consideration of people in Sheffield when she and her father are walking outside, and how she uses sound for orientation. She discusses her relationship with her family, her attempts to join a youth club and take part in other leisure activities, the attitudes of sighted people towards her and her belief that they are unwilling to learn about the experiences of blind people. She describes her attempts to make new friends and form relationships with men in Sheffield and the difficulty that she had other blind people have in being allowed to be independent and to be friends with sighted people. She talks about her hopes for future employment, possibly in laboratory work, using a braille micrometer, and her feelings of loneliness when she worked as a typist (tracks 5-13).

Total: 49.21 mins

Dubber's reference number: PLA KF565D0764480