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IN TOUCH Ìý

TX:Ìý 29.03.2022Ìý 2040-2100

PRESENTER:Ìý ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý PETER WHITE

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PRODUCER:Ìý ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý BETH HEMMINGS

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White

Good evening. ÌýTonight, the house and gardens aiming to be the most accessible tourist site for blind people in the UK.

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Clip

Even when you make an initial phone call to some place and you say – have you got anything audio described – and you’re just met with a – no, no, we don’t do that. ÌýSo, I wanted us, at Strawberry Fields, to not be like that.

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White

Well, we’ll be giving it the once over later on in the programme.Ìý But first, we look at one of the techniques that Strawberry Fields is using to describe what other visitors are seeing – audio description.Ìý Now, of course, there’s still concern that the quantity of audio description on television, film and stage is a worry for many visually impaired people.Ìý But we don’t hear as much about its quality.Ìý Surely that matters too.Ìý On that, at least, there does seem to be some good news on the way – a project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council is working on enhanced audio description with the aim of making television and films a more complete experience.

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Well, our reporter, Fern Lulham, who’s pretty keen on audio description herself, has had a closer look at this work.Ìý So, Fern, what actually is enhanced audio description, what is being enhanced?

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Lulham

Well, Peter, useful though it is, standard audio description is sometimes seen as a bit of an add on to TV or film productions.Ìý And enhanced audio description aims to deliver a more immersive experience for everyone, whether or not they’re blind.Ìý Now to find out a bit more about this I spoke to Dr Mariana Lopez, the principal investigator in the project you managed at the University of York and here’s what she told me.

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Lopez

The first method has to do with sound effects, to make it clearer in terms of actions as well as the presence of characters.Ìý A sound effect of an action might already be in the original film soundtrack but it might be a little bit too low in the mix for it to be instantly recognisable.Ìý So, we actually, sometimes, adjust the levels to make them clearer.Ìý

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The second technique has to do with spatial audio.Ìý And by this, I mean changing the location of sound effects and voices to match where they are coming from on screen.Ìý So, for example, if a character is going from the front to the back, walking across a room, we can actually hear the footsteps and we can hear the dialogue lines being positioned depending on where the character is.Ìý So, it’s a really powerful tool to paint a picture of what the setting is and where people and objects are.Ìý

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The third technique is first person narration.Ìý This is used in quite limited manner, so that it doesn’t start obstructing other elements of the soundtrack but it’s really useful when we want to clarify an action or sometimes, maybe, there’s a gesture that is very important.Ìý And it can be even a colour that is really important to setting the scene.Ìý And together, those three techniques, are enhanced audio description.

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White

That’s Dr Mariana Lopez from the University of York.Ìý But, Fern, I mean, to appreciate that, aren’t you going to need the best kit, you know a fancy speaker, a very good set of headphones?

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Lulham

Well, I put that point to Mariana and she reassured me that you can simply use your everyday headphones, you know, the sort that you might listen to music through, for example, and you can still have the experience without investing loads in pricey new tech.

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White

Well that all sounds very impressive but, surely, with audio description levels on TV and film as low as they are for blind and partially sighted people, aren’t we trying to run before we can walk?

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Lulham

I’m sure you won’t be alone in raising that point, Peter.Ìý As enhanced audio description is focused on quality and is integral to the whole production process, it should raise the profile of inclusion and make that more apparent across the industry.Ìý And if it catches on and starts being used by blind and sighted people alike, I’d hope that that would lead to improvements in quality and quantity for all audio description.Ìý If you’re wondering what enhanced audio description sounds like, the wait is over.Ìý Here’s a clip from the short film Pearl which is a story with gothic elements about a girl who produces pearls in her lungs.

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Clip – Pearl

I sit on my bed.Ìý My dingy room full of shadows.Ìý The only light is from my window.Ìý I face the light.Ìý The nurse brings the silver bucket and gets me ready.Ìý Mother comes in.

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I don’t know what happened, it’s worse this time.

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She gets the oxygen mask.Ìý As something moves under my skin.

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White

Well, I still think good tech would help there but Fern Lulham, thank you very much indeed.

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If you’d like to listen to Fern’s extended interview with Dr Lopez you can go to the Â鶹ԼÅÄ World Service’s Digital Planet website and download the episode broadcast on February 8th.

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Now, it began life as a gothic country manor in the outskirts of Liverpool.Ìý It was converted by the Salvation Army into an orphanage and children’s home but it’s now a growing tourist attraction with ambitions to make it fully accessible for disabled visitors, indeed the best in the UK.Ìý And, of course, it was made world famous by one of John Lennon’s most haunting and captivating songs.

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Music – John Lennon – Strawberry Fields Forever

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Clip

Good morning.Ìý Welcome to Strawberry Fields.

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Thank you.

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Hi there.

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Music

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Patrick

Hi Peter, hi Beth.

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Hemmings

Hi Patrick.

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White

Are you going to show us around?

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Patrick

I am, yes, let me just grab you each a pair of headphones and I’m going to describe everything that’s in the visitor experience for you as we go through.

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So, we’ve just entered the visitor experience.Ìý On your right, just in front of you, there is a strange piece of artwork.Ìý It appears, at first, to be black and white piano keys with large letters stuck on them.Ìý At first, it’s hard to make out what the letters are saying but as we approach and view from a different angle it becomes obvious that they spell out the words ‘nothing is real’ and they create a fine introduction to the exhibition.Ìý

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So, if you’d like to reach out.

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White

Okay.Ìý So, it’s in front of me, yeah?

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Patrick

So, you’re kind of touching on the black keys right now.

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White

They’re huge.

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Patrick

Yeah, so they’re about, I’d say about 10 foot tall.Ìý If you reach your hands down slightly, you’ll be able to feel the base of the keys on your left hand, so you feel it gets a bit wider…

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White

Wider there, yes.

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Patrick

…at the bottom, like a piano key.

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White

Yeah.Ìý Do you tailor this to the visually impaired people that you get?

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Patrick

Yes, so I’ve got a script with me that is the visually impaired version of our script because usually there’s an interactive guide that explains it all for you as you go around but it’s on a little like iPad style screen, so instead of an iPad you get iPatrick instead.

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To your left there is a large projection on the wall, it is interchanging between images of the house and a video of John Lennon – no of Paul McCartney even, sorry.Ìý And he’s talking about John.Ìý I’m going to actually play that through your headphones now for you, so you can hear what he has to say.Ìý I’m just going to give it a second to loop back, there you go.

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Paul McCartney

Well, Strawberry Fields is a song that John had because he used to live next door to this place called Strawberry Fields, which was a Salvation Army place for kids and he used to bunk over and it was his little magic garden to sort of play in.Ìý So, whenever I went to visit him, he’d sort of say – hey, you know – and we’d go past and he said – this is Strawberry Fields – and he’d give me the gen on it.Ìý

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White

So, this is a multi-stringed instrument.

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Patrick

Yeah, it is an Indian stringed instrument and it’s usually got between 21-36 strings.

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White

One, two, three… perhaps we won’t do that – all there.

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Patrick

So, in the song Strawberry Fields Forever George Harrison actually played one of these.

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Music

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White

Again, though, it’s a lovely sort of feel, the strings.Ìý I bet you anything you like that blind people who come round here will spend quite a lot of time playing with this.

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Patrick

They do.Ìý So, I’m also going to pass you now – so this is actually a small replica of the gate.

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White

Oh goodness, it’s got pointy things on the top, you wouldn’t want fancy trying to climb over that.

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Patrick

So, the gates themselves that are actually located in our garden at the moment are a larger version of what you’re feeling now and they’re about the size of a garage door and they weigh about one and a half tonnes.Ìý They’re pierced with scrolls and decorated with flower heads that resemble the Lancastrian rose and they’ve got spear finials on top, which is what you’ve already discovered.

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White

I’ve discovered, yeah.Ìý Spear finials, it sounds rather daunting doesn’t it.Ìý

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This kind of large-scale production here, it’s fascinating, you get the tactile sense, difficult as a totally blind person certainly, to get the overall sense because it’s so large and it’s spread out.

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Patrick

Yeah, I was going to say, it’s a very abstract area and it is a very open space as well in this room.Ìý We usually do encourage people to have a sit down and obviously take a look at it from a step back but obviously when we’ve got visually impaired customers, we encourage you to get up close.Ìý We’re trying to get as much of this abstract to you as we physically can.

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In front of you, right now, again, Peter, if you’d like to reach out in front of you, you’ll feel a glass case, essentially but what’s inside this case is the piano that John composed Imagine on.

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White

Do you mean I can’t touch it?Ìý Put it in a glass case?

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Patrick

It’s sad, I know, I know.

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White

That’s not very good for blind people.

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Patrick

Oh blame management, sir, not me.

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White

Right, I will, because I was going to play the first few notes of Strawberry Fields on this piano.

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Patrick

Well, luckily, I will take you over to the mellotron in a little bit and that is actually the instrument that the first few notes of Strawberry Field are played on and you’ll be able to have a play on that.

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White

Right.

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Patrick

So, this piano is more based around, obviously, Imagine.Ìý Well a little feature I would just like to point out on it, on the side of the piano, just next to the keys, there is actually still cigarette burns of where John would take his cigarette out and place it on the side of the piano while he was playing.

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White

Really?Ìý I have a piano that’s got rings on it the size of a beer glass, perhaps one day…

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Patrick

I’d like to say one day we can have that in a case…

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White

Maybe you can, yeah.

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But the best was yet to come for me because someone who’s taking an enormous interest in the Strawberry Fields project is John’s half-sister, Julia Baird.Ìý And it turns out she knew all about In Touch as well.

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Baird

I’ve listened to your programme for years but I’ve never ever seen a photograph of you.Ìý I love your programme.

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White

Can I ask you, if you were to put it into words what Strawberry Fields, what this place meant to John, given…

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Baird

Everything.Ìý He went to live from my mother, our mother, to live with Mimi, it was never his choice, it was never anybody’s choice, believe me.Ìý He ended up just up the road here.Ìý So, John, very quickly found this place as a sanctuary.Ìý And at that time, there were only young girls in it and the girls used to be doing games and play time and stuff and John and Paul and others would be sitting in the tree watching them.

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White

Because I’m interested what you think he would have made of this now, what you’ve done here?

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Baird

Well, he would have loved it.Ìý I didn’t do it the Salvation Army did it.Ìý He would have absolutely loved this as a sanctuary because we’re dealing with students with mild to moderate learning disabilities.Ìý John had his own stresses and these students bring their own stresses.Ìý And I always say, when I give a talk, when they’ve done their 10 weeks, and I say you can always, always come back, this is your forever home.

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White

I mean we’re obviously on In Touch, as you listen, you’ll know…

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Baird

Yeah, I do, I do.

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White

…we’re particularly interested in blind and partially sighted people.Ìý Would that side of it have interested John do you think?

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Baird

Anything that was slightly out of kilter would have interested him because he was slightly out of kilter.

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White

He was slightly short sighted, wasn’t he?

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Baird

He was extremely short sighted and so am I.Ìý And our mother was but she wouldn’t wear glasses because she was too beautiful, I think.

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Barton

I was employed as the volunteer coordinator at Strawberry Field.

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White

That’s Kelly Barton who was responsible for many of the accessibility features that you heard earlier on.

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Barton

In the very early days, when the exhibition had just been set up, as a staff team everyone went around the exhibition and for myself it just felt like I could listen to the media guide anywhere, I could have sat at my desk and done the same thing, I didn’t really get anything from being in the exhibition.Ìý There’s some lovely interviews with different people but that’s all I was getting, I wanted to know where I was, how big the room was, I wanted to kind of feel – get the sort of atmosphere and the impression of where I actually was.

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White

So, what did you tell them they ought to do?

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Barton

I just said that they needed really to bring it more alive for people who were visually impaired or blind or partially sighted.Ìý So, that could be adding some kind of tactile elements in.Ìý I asked for more description of what the room was actually like, what people were – visually – what they were able to see.Ìý The media guide is not usable for someone who can’t see anywhere because you need to be able to control the screen and it’s not got kind of speech software or anything, so you can’t use that yourself.Ìý As you’ve seen, you do still need a guide with you but it needed that extra element.

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White

How much was this based on other tourist attractions you’d gone round as a blind person?

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Barton

I’ve been to places that are probably not overly accessible.Ìý Even when you make an initial phone call to some place and you say – have you got anything audio described – and you’re just met with a – no, no, we don’t do that.Ìý So, I wanted us, at Strawberry Field, to not be that.Ìý Genuinely from the heart the Salvation Army, they want to be inclusive and so they’re working towards it and I think they’ll be the first to say they don’t always get everything right but attitudinally they are brilliant because they want to work towards that and for me, that means so much more.

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White

Describe your favourite bits of the site now it’s up and running.

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Barton

Ooh, I love the gardens, especially when it’s a nice sunny day, that, for me, is a really, really nice place.

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Baird

We’re walking along the strawberry beds on the left-hand side.

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White

Right.

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Baird

Now, here’s the gates.Ìý There’s two sets of gates now, one on the front, even when this was a derelict site, coaches, taxis, buses came, people would get out, have a photograph, get back on.Ìý So, we knew that there was a possibility for things going on here because people are coming.Ìý If they go to the Cavern, if they go to Beatles Story, they would get out here, out of town, just to get a photograph by the gates.

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White

Can I just ask you?Ìý How would you sum up the idea, the concept, behind this place as it is now?

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Baird

It’s continuing the legacy of working with disaffected people.Ìý We’re talking bringing people into mainstream society and being welcomed.Ìý What we’re doing is opening the door.Ìý This is an utter privilege to have this building here but it’s because of John, because it’s Liverpool, because it’s the Beatles.

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White

Kelly, I have to say the day we were there, there weren’t a lot of visually impaired people going around and I just wonder if that was a bit of a problem.

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Barton

Yeah, I think that’s a massive area that needs to be worked on to get more people there.Ìý And that’s why we started with the focus group and I know the guys in the focus group will be really instrumental in helping raise awareness and talking to other people, like their friends or people they might know or organisations who support people with sight loss and I think that’s really important going forward.

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White

Well, that’s a good point to bring in Matthew – Matthew Payton – you were part of the focus group.Ìý Just give me your impressions of Strawberry Fields.

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Payton

I tried to go in with an open mind really.Ìý I knew a bit about the history but as far as what actually went on at Strawberry Fields, I didn’t really know.Ìý And actually, doing the tour as well, it did feel like they’d really sort of managed to break that accessibility barrier for visually impaired people.Ìý The room was described, which was really important to me because it’s quite a dark room.Ìý I think I’d been to a few sort of places that claimed to be quite accessible to visually impaired people and you found that there’s bits missing or maybe the audio doesn’t work.

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White

Now the point of a focus group is to get suggestions of potential improvements, what are yours, either those you’ve already made or those you’d still like to make?

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Payton

I’d say one of the issues we had, the audio kept going in and out a little bit and also sometimes some of the actual spoken bit, where some of the interviews were going on, the volume was pretty low.Ìý But generally, I thought that it was absolutely brilliant.Ìý I mean it’s definitely one of the best I’ve done and I’ve done quite a few, lived in London and do quite a few.Ìý I thought it was, overall, very good.

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White

Now in the publicity the phrase the best tourist attraction in Britain is made in relation to accessibility, it’s a big claim Kelly, that, it’s a big claim, are they anywhere near it yet?

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Barton

Oh it is a big claim but you’ve got to claim big haven’t you.Ìý I think they are in terms of their attitude.Ìý For me that is always the most important thing because you go to so many places where they just don’t care.Ìý And if you’ve got the attitude right, anything can happen.

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White

What I want to do is play the first line of Strawberry Fields.

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Music

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Ooh that was nearly the beginning...that’ll do.

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Well, a brilliant day for me, as you can probably tell.Ìý

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And if you have a tourist experience that you’d like to give a shout out to, you can email intouch@bbc.co.uk, you can leave your voice messages on 0161 8361338.Ìý From me, Peter White, producer Beth Hemmings and studio managers David Crackles and Mike Smith, goodbye.