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	TX: 07.08.09 - Disabled Quiz Show PRESENTER: PETER WHITE

	Downloaded from www.bbc.co.uk/radio4 THE ATTACHED TRANSCRIPT WAS TYPED FROM A RECORDING AND NOT COPIED FROM AN ORIGINAL SCRIPT. BECAUSE OF THE RISK OF MISHEARING AND THE DIFFICULTY IN SOME CASES OF IDENTIFYING INDIVIDUAL SPEAKERS, THE 麻豆约拍 CANNOT VOUCH FOR ITS COMPLETE ACCURACY. White Now tonight an all deaf team - One Sense Less - will be making their debut on 麻豆约拍 2's long running series Eggheads. Here's a taster of tonight's show: Clip Here's your first question: Which detective features in the 1937 novel Death on the Nile? Is it Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poiroit or Jules Magrait? Not Sherlock Holmes. Well it's not Sherlock Holmes. Because that was long before the 1937. So I don't think that one, no. It can't be Jules. No. That was a Frenchman so no, no, no it can't be that. Hercule Poiroit - now he's Belgium, so there's not much difference between those two. I think I'll go for Hercule Poiroit, yeah Hercule Poiroit. Hercule Poiroit - Agatha Christie - it's the right answer. White A lot of you feeling fairly smug at home I suggest. Well earlier I spoke to their team captain - Charles Hird and I asked him what changes and accommodations the production company had made to enable them to take part. Hird They provided two sign language interpreters and also captions - TV monitor captions - in both the studio and the question room. So everything was shown on screen. We were able to get on with things, they just advised us whatever. White As a blind person I'm a quiz fan too, I play in pub quiz teams, now I can't pick up knowledge kind of casually by glancing at newspapers and I wondered if there's a deaf equivalent of that? Hird As you say tremendous amount of information is picked up in casual conversation and obviously deaf people don't have the same access to that information that hearing people would have. We particularly asked the producers if they could leave out music questions because obviously we would be very disadvantaged if we had them. Apart from that bring it on - we'll be happy. White What do you think about the number and portrayal of disabled people on TV entertainment programmes in general? Hird You have hit a very sore spot there. If there's a deaf character in a play or a film they bring in a hearing actor and they coach them in a few signs and then they're supposed to be deaf but they really don't work because the signs are not real signs, they're just waving their hands around and pretending they're deaf. And sign language users, viewers who are watching, will feel insulted that their language is being portrayed in such a way. There was one deaf girl being used in Casualty, she was really deaf, and she signed beautifully, that looked perfect. Sign language is such a beautiful language if it's used properly. White That's Charles Hird who's the captain of the team who you will be able to see later on this evening. Well I'm joined by Mary Fitzpatrick, who's editorial executive for diversity at the 麻豆约拍. Mary, we saw an advert for Eggheads, it was on the British Disabled Angling Association website, I mean has the 麻豆约拍 been actively looking for more disabled contestants in games and quizzes and are you trying to promote it quite hard? Fitzpatrick I think the 麻豆约拍 is always keen to find a way to represent the audience back at themselves and it's not so much that we're looking, I think that as we include more people with disabilities in our programmes those who have a disability see very clearly that they can be involved in our output. So the team tonight approached us and said you know we're keen to be a part of the series and they were fantastic and absolutely are in the programme on their merit. White Let me bring in Alison Walsh, Alison is editorial manager for disability at Channel 4 and a member of the Broadcasting and Creative Industries Disability Network - the BCIDN. Has the number of disabled contestants been increasing on TV do you think and if so what's pushing it? Walsh Well I think it's definitely been increasing. I mean if you go back to around 2006, which is when Pete won Big Brother, I think I would use that as a sort of marker for a sudden increase really in inclusion of disabled contributors across the board and that covers everything from Deal or No Deal to a deaf actor in Shameless this year. And a premier in the series Location, Location this week featured a disabled house hunter. That sort of thing has become much more the norm than it was pre-2006, although I can think of examples, in fact I think Without Prejudice was made by the same company that makes Eggheads and that was on Channel 4 quite a few years ago and did include disabled contestants. Countdown has had a range of disabled contestants for a number of years. So I think there's a kind of - there is certainly a move, as Mary said, to ... White A groundswell. Walsh Yeah a groundswell which is - you know it's what we should be doing, we should be normalising disability and making it sort of unremarkable. White Just remind us, Alison, about the barriers in the past that made it difficult because you were presumably quite involved in some of those and will have known what some of the difficulties were. Walsh I think one of the big difficulties is the lack of disabled people applying for the shows and of course as Mary said earlier it is helped by putting them on there because the audience then thinks - yeah I can take part. And we certainly had, for example, an increase in applicants for Big Brother after Pete in 2006 and Mikey in 2008. The other things are that attitudes had to change, I mean I can remember a conversation with a producer for a show that was about women going shopping, buying clothes, and I was arguing that they should use a disabled woman and they - the producer said - do you understand what sort of show this is - which sort of implied that she felt that there were some shows that disabled people just shouldn't be part of. And I really think that attitude wouldn't happen now, I think there has been a real kind of shift and as disabled people have sort of come out of the ghetto and into the mainstream the - everybody's attitude has changed. White Mary Fitzpatrick, Alison's done her plug quite well - Channel 4 has got quite a long list of entertainment programmes which features - she mentioned Wife Swap, Location, Location, Big Brother, F Word, Super Nanny - there are quite a lot of them, is the 麻豆约拍 keeping up? Fitzpatrick I think the 麻豆约拍's definitely keeping up, I mean a really good example would be recently we had a blind contestant involved in University Challenge and that was really ... White She's still in isn't she, I think, I think she's still - well what's gone out - I don't want you to give - don't give anything away now, I shouldn't have asked that question. Fitzpatrick I think that shows that we've done recently, including a prime time Saturday night Last Choir Standing, was a fantastic milestone for the 麻豆约拍 because we had, within that show, within the series, a disabled choir or a choir that had a lot of disabled people within it from Northern Ireland and that was a very exciting challenge for us to find a way to bring that choir over from Northern Ireland and accommodate the wide range of disabilities and allow them to feel completely empowered to do their best at the show and they did very, very well and they stayed in quite some way down. White Can I pick up on the implications of that because this is not cost free is it, both in terms of money, I mean there are costs in making adjustments to enable disabled people to take part, I mean the cost of sign language interpreters, that Charles was talking about, will producers be able to afford those adjustments as production budgets get stretched? Fitzpatrick I think they will because we have - there's the access to work unit but there's also, as Alison was saying, there's this idea that people are becoming much more informed about how to accommodate people with disabilities and the importance of accommodating them - you know the public service broadcaster, it is absolutely our role to represent the audience back at themselves and we - when a production company come to me and say well - production team come to me and say look you know we want to do this but we're slightly nervous about the cost you have to find a way because we cannot exclude people simply because they have a disability, it's not acceptable. Walsh This actually came up at BCIDN, an event that was hosted at the 麻豆约拍 a couple of weeks ago where we had a lot of producers of entertainment shows and commissioning editors discussing these issues and one of the producers made the point that really there should be a line in the budget, as sort of access line in the budget. And I know it's hard and you know budgets being squeezed all the time but I think it's about having the foresight to see that there should be a line, however small, to try and be one step ahead but also to understand that it sometimes just requires a bit of creative thinking because after all a lot of these programmes involve sets which can be adapted at fairly minimal cost, if that's necessary. We had a big discussion about the flight of steps at Big Brother, whether that was a kind of off putting to disabled people who might want to go on the show and we can to the conclusion that actually it was a very important part of - a visual part of the show and so long as disabled people can be brought in in a dignified and sort of entertainmenty way then that wouldn't be a problem. White Can I just raise very quickly with you both, Charles Hird raised this issue - I mean he was talking perhaps more about drama than quizzes but is there a danger of paying lip service to this when you do it? Walsh It's all about the casting isn't it, you've got to get the casting perfect so that the audience doesn't think for a second oh that's - they've ticked a box there. So if the person is right for the role or they're the best contestants on the show then you've done a good job. And I think in my experience - I don't know if Mary agrees - the producers are very kind of alive to that really. Fitzpatrick I agree, I don't think anyone pays lip service because that is so transparent and everyone can see through it. What - my role and I'm sure Alison's as well who's similar, is our roles are to encourage, support and keep people robust when there is a challenge that they are unsure about and I don't, for one minute, ever, very encourage lip service, I encourage - never use the word can't, always say we will make this happen and absolutely our door is wide open to anybody. White Okay we will have to leave it there, it's so good to see the 麻豆约拍 and Channel 4 getting on. Mary Fitzpatrick and Alison Walsh thank you. And if you want to find out whether One Sense Less win Eggheads, I nearly gave something away about perhaps one of the other ones, you can watch on 麻豆约拍 2 tonight at 6.00 p.m. Back to the Transcripts homepage Back to the You and Yours homepage The 麻豆约拍 is not responsible for external websites

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