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Copy of Audio Description Complaint to the BBC

10th May 2006 • Dave

It is with great reluctance that I am complaining about audio description again so soon. I am honestly not planning on making this a weekly occurrence.

The decision regarding AD for the final episode of the Apprentice was probably taken before Tuesday Night’s broadcast of BBC Radio 4’s In Touch, which did an excellent job of highlighting the plight of the blind community in campaigning for consistent, reliable and equitable targets for audio described television. I certainly would not expect In Touch to cover this again in the near future. Clearly other issues exist which impact the quality of life of blind people which require In Touch’s attention.

However, on the face of it at least, it would seem that someone somewhere is not getting the message about audio description. I respect that their may have been delivery constraints in respect of the live part of BBC Two’s broadcast of the final episode of The Apprentice. However, the vast majority of this broadcast was pre-recorded and thus could have been delivered with audio description consistent with previous episodes of the Apprentice.

So in time honoured tradition…

Dear BBC

For your information I intend sending copies of this complaint to Ofcom, Sky’s accessibility team, the RNIB and BBC Radio 4’s In Touch which carries information of interest to blind people.

I have enjoyed the BBC Two series The Apprentice, which has been fantastically audio described on Freeview and digital satellite. I was hugely frustrated when I sat down on 10 May to find that even though The final episode of The Apprentice had been advertised as audio described in TV listings, the broadcast itself was not. Surely this is a mistake?

I appreciate that only some broadcasters are obligated to broadcast only a small percentage of their output with audio description. However for the BBC, arguably the world’s leading public service broadcaster, having offered a prime time series with the profile of The Apprentice with AD, only to drop the AD for the final episode seems incomprehensible.

Yours faithfully

Dave Williams

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My MP wrote to me!

10th May 2006 • Dave

From: Michael Foster MP
Sent: Wednesday, May 10, 2006 6:14 PM
To: Dave Williams
Subject: OFCOM report

Dear David Williams

Thank you for your letter of the 3rd May about the report by Ofcom.

I will be writing to Ofcom to reinforce the point you make and as soon as I have a response I will contact you again.

You may be aware that I have worked closely with Dolphin over the years and make regular visits to RNIB New College and the issues you raise are of great interest to me.

Thank you for contacting me about this matter.

Best wishes
Yours sincerely
Michael Foster MP
Worcester

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Audio Description on In Touch – BBC

9th May 2006 • Dave

The BBC web site will shortly be updated to carry details of the In Touch for 9 May, featuring coverage of events surrounding the initial lack of audio description for the Channel 4 series Lost.

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N91 coming to Orange in the UK!

7th May 2006 • Dave

Anyone reading this blog for a while will know I have been looking forward to the arrival of the Nokia N91 4GB Smartphone MP3 player for around a year now. It’s finally appeared in the Orange shop, although with the following description and no mention of the 4GB microdrive.

“The Nokia N91 is your family photo lab in the palm of your hand.”

Apparently this really is the N91, but Orange’s marketing people just have not jumped on the killer features yet.

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Plans for New Street Station – BBC

7th May 2006 • Dave

I use New Street quite a lot and generally do not have too many problems. Although in Feb I was once subjected to no less than 3 platform changes. Amazing I managed to get the train at all that day. Some kind of re-modeling of this part of the rail network is long over-due, although it’s not going to happen over night. The disruption in the mean time will likely be horrendous.

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Blogging against Disablism Day

7th May 2006 • Dave

Some thought provoking stuff here. Had I got my thoughts organised I would have liked to take part. As it was I was coming back from Preston on Monday and feeling pretty drained. But many of these people have in a lot of cases reflected my own thoughts anyway.

On Friday a woman stood next to me in a bar, and after a few moments of silence she said.

“you are standing next to a disabled woman.”

I was not sure why she was telling me this or what kind of thing she expected me to say. After a pause I said litely.

“right, well, you are standing next to a disabled man.”

After a few further moments of silence, she slowly walked away.

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Calories in Alcoholic drinks

7th May 2006 • Dave

Nutracheck.co.uk has all sorts of information about how many Calories are in a wide range of products. As a friend of mine has recently gone on a health kick, and someone said to me tonight that there are a lot of Calories in my prefered tipple, Guinness, I thought I would look up some numbers.

A pint of draft Guinness contains 210 Calories. So how does this compare with other popular drinks. There are 256 in Stella Artois, 355 in most Premium Lagers, and 392 Calories in Carlsberg Special Brew! Just as well I rarely drink lager.

I like a pint of Draught Mild which has 136 Calories but like a good curry mild is not easy to find in Worcester. Mild is just ahead of red wine on 119 and dry white wine on 116. I always thought red wine had less Calories than white wine, but if like me you also enjoy a dry white then you would be undercutting the red by 3 Calories, per 175ml glass.

These days a lot of the girls drink things like WKD Blue which stands at 228 Calories per bottle, 18 Calories more than Guinness.

A friend of mine recently declared he was giving up beer in favour of scotch in order to loose weight. while it is true that a single Whisky & Soda only has 56 Calories about a quarter of those found in Guinness and around a third of those found in a pint of bitter. However, one can take 30 to 45 minutes over a good pint of Guinness or bitter, a single Whisky & Soda would probably be gone in a quarter of the time and cost half as much. So over a 45 minute period, most people drinking Whisky & Soda would have spent twice as much money and consumed an equivalent number of Calories anyway.

False economics me thinks. I’m sticking to the black stuff even though on Friday I was charged the princely sum of £2.90 per pint!

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