In Touch Folgen

Two visually-impaired opera singers tell us their stories.New Zealander Joanne Roughton Arnold chose singing opera over playing the violin. Alan Pingarrón from Mexico is taking part in a Royal Opera House training programme.Presenter: Peter White Producer: Lee Kumutat Reporter: Toby Davey

22-year-old Matthew Shiffrin contacted Lego to ask them to make instructions for their construction sets accessible to visually-impaired people. The blind Lego enthusiast had been devising his own, with the help of a friend, for ten years and making them available on his own website.The toy company has met the challenge and released instructions in a downloadable format for screenreaders, for braille, and to listen to directly online. Peter White speaks to Matthew Shiffrin about why he loves Lego so much when it’s not historically been accessible to him, and also to Fenella Blaize-Charity from Lego about its plans.12-year-old Hester is this week’s studio guest, and she and her Mum Sarah, try out the new instructions with mixed success. Hester also shares her recent experience of visiting a blind school in Ethiopia.Presenter: Peter White Producer: Lee KumutatPictured: Sarah, Hester and Peter in the Radio 4 studio in Salford.

This is the second episode of our series examining the times in our lives as blind people when we are faced with a loss of control and power entirely caused by our visual impairment. Both programmes look at ways of gathering yourself, restoring your dignity, suppressing that sense of powerlessness, and giving you back the control everyone needs to be functioning adults. Situations like feeling loss of control because of access, orientation and/or mobility. Handing power over to someone else over something you need help doing. Our thanks to everybody we spoke to during researching these programmes.Presenter: Peter White Producer: Lee Kumutat