In Touch Folgen

When being diagnosed with sight loss, it is often essential to be able to access your local sight loss support services quickly. This can be for things like long cane training, to guidance on Personal Independence Payments. We discuss the impacts of delays in accessing these services and the Certificate of Vision Impairment (CVI). If eligible, this certificate can trigger support available from your local authority's sight support team - if it has one. We discuss these themes with a consultant ophthalmologist from Moorfields Eye Hospital, a patient, a rehab officer and an ex-eye clinic liaison officer (ECLO).Further information: If you do not qualify for a CVI, you don’t need to go through the registration process to get help from your local social services. When you visit an optician, they can provide something called a Low Vision Leaflet (LVL). This contains contact details for sources of information and advice, along with a form that you can send to your local social services to ask for an assessment. Moreover, hospital eye clinic staff can fill in a form called a Referral of Vision Impairment (RVI), which does the same, but also staff are able state how urgently they think you require help, so you do not have to wait until the end of your treatment at the clinic to be referred.Presenter: Peter White Producer: Beth Hemmings Production Coordinator: Liz Poole Website image description: Peter White sits smiling in the centre of the image, wearing a dark green jumper. Above Peter's head is the BBC logo (three individual white squares house each of the three letters). Bottom centre and overlaying the image are the words "In Touch" and the Radio 4 logo (the word Radio in a bold white font, with the number 4 inside a white circle). The background is a bright mid-blue with two rectangles angled diagonally to the right. Both are behind Peter, one of a darker blue and the other is a lighter blue.

Selina Mills and Andrew Leland have both just published new books about blindness. Andrew's is called The Country of the Blind: A Memoir at the End of Sight and Selina's is Life Unseen: A Story of Blindness. Both books have similar themes, in that they assess where the societal attitudes towards blindness may have originated from and how they subsequently interweave into our modern society. Both authors are visually impaired and live on either side of the Atlantic, and so they join us in discussing the cultural and historical differences.In Touch has widely covered the proposed closures of ticketing offices at train stations. Well now a public consultation has been launched by Transport Focus and London TravelWatch. It ends on Wednesday 26 July and to submit your responses, you can visit their websites or call 0300 123 2350.Presenter: Peter White Producer: Beth Hemmings Production Coordinator: Liz Poole Website image description: Peter White sits smiling in the centre of the image, wearing a dark green jumper. Above Peter's head is the BBC logo (three individual white squares house each of the three letters). Bottom centre and overlaying the image are the words "In Touch" and the Radio 4 logo (the word Radio in a bold white font, with the number 4 inside a white circle). The background is a bright mid-blue with two rectangles angled diagonally to the right. Both are behind Peter, one of a darker blue and the other is a lighter blue.

Tennis has long been considered one of the hardest sports to adapt, especially if you have little or no vision. Well, it has been done and Amanda Green from Metro Blind Sport and VI tennis player herself, tells us about the history of where the adapted game came from. Amanda, along with totally blind player Monica Smith, also tell us about how it is played. Wimbledon is in full swing and there are a couple of firsts at this year's championships. In conjunction with Vodafone and assistive technology company GiveVision, Wimbledon have been trialling wearable headsets that allow partially sighted fans at the games to view the finer details. And The Wimbledon Foundation, the charitable arm of the championships, have teamed up with sight loss charity Merton Vision to provide eight visually impaired people with the opportunity to work in various roles throughout the championships. Alan Farrell and Nathan Maraj tell us about the kind of jobs they've been doing and what the experience has meant to them.Presenter: Peter White Producer: Beth Hemmings Production Coordinator: Liz Poole Website image description: Peter White sits smiling in the centre of the image, wearing a dark green jumper. Above Peter's head is the BBC logo (three individual white squares house each of the three letters). Bottom centre and overlaying the image are the words "In Touch" and the Radio 4 logo (the word Radio in a bold white font, with the number 4 inside a white circle). The background is a bright mid-blue with two rectangles angled diagonally to the right. Both are behind Peter, one of a darker blue and the other is a lighter blue.