Dave Williams

Thought provoking piece from the independent.

I am a .dll I am dynamic. I am constantly in danger of bringing
down the house, because I do not play well with others. Well at least the authors of that web site thinks so.

Which File Extension are You?

Well worth wasting a couple of mins on.

I bought a couple of bits from SatCure a few years ago. They were quick and helpful. And even willing to build a couple of cables for me.

For some unknown reason after two years my origenal Sky Plus remote stopped working this evening. I swapped the batteries a couple of times and contemplated calling a 0870 number to contact Sky to find out what may be wrong. Glad I did not.

I had a quick Google for "sky plus remote control hard reset". A couple of clicks later I was back in business thanks to the good people at SatCure. They had the reset codes and the code for my TV so the Sky Plus remote is back doing everything it should. Yay!

This and the England game made for a beautiful end to an average day.

Labels: TV

Bank Holidays are a bit like buses in that you wait ages for one and then three arrive at once. Not the most original thought in the world I know. Although this year it seems as though every other weekend from mid April to the end of May has been a bank holiday. This is because we had a late Easter.

Having worked most of my lunch hour I was able to get away from work early on Friday and jump on the train heading for another fun packed weekend in the north of England.

All the details are not locked in yet. I intend getting to Preston to do a bit of pubbing, stay with friends and have a word with my piano. I plan to drop by Blackburn briefly to visit family, oopse not sure if I told my mother I am on my way. I am intending to go to Leeds to collect on a bet about the outcome of the FA Cup final. If I have enough energy left then I would like to visit Manchester on Monday to have lunch with my sister.

May has been a pretty productive month at work. I am closing a greater number of support enquiries compared with April. I am also getting involved with other aspects of the business, and it is very exciting to see the evolution of Dolphin’s Windows Mobile products. I have also done some work with marketing, sales and the product design teams. Some of the projects I initiated during my first couple of weeks at Dolphin will be coming to fruition in the foreseeable future, and this is hugely gratifying. Moreover it is a massive privilege to be able to make a modest contribution to one of the world’s leading developers of screen reading software.

The break this weekend is most welcome though. It will be tremendous to touch base with the good people of Preston, as well as crisscross the north of England in order to call on various family and friends.

As an aside, anyone know of anywhere I can catch The Da Vinci Code audio described?

Pip pip.

You better believe it baby! :)

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That's what the good folks over at Beer in the Evening think. Here are a few findings of my own now I have lived in Worcester for nearly 8 weeks.

The Berwick Arms on Bath Road - Guinness is ok at £2.65 which seems to be about average for Worcester. Manager Todd is a good lad and enjoys a bit of banter. Girls behind the bar are helpful and talk to you like a human being. cigarette machine is the cheapest I have found at around £4.60 for 17 fags. Occasional live music, no Sunday lunches. I managed to piss off the landlord by saying I hoped Leeds would get beat in the playoffs. He evidently does not do banter. Shame, I had worked hard to like this pub in spite of it having no real beer and even fewer customers. Oh and Leeds got stuffed! So I am prob not going to spend any more in there at least until it changes hands or I get really desperate. Frustrating as it is a minute walk from my front door.

The Toby Carvery - Bath Road Broomhall - As well as having no real beer and average Guinness, is full of people paying over the odds for dried up food which has been left out all day. The staff seemed embarrassed and apologetic.

The Timberdine Bath Road - As far as soulless out of town family friendly eateries go, this Harvester is not too bad. Do not expect any real beer or log fires, but you should find a decent 16oz steak, friendly staff and even a Braille menu. Although the Braille menu is out of date and does not include any of the alcoholic drinks. Why would it? Blind people do not drink. Sorry that should be, blind people do not drink drive. I rest my case.

Horn & Trumpet, Angel Street - Essentially this is Wetherspoons plus. Not sure about the beer selection as I did not have time to check. Food was on the decent side of standard. If you go for a Jimmy remember where you were sat as this place is pretty big for a city centre pub.

The Dragon Inn, The Tything - I cannot say enough positive about this pub. no football, no lager, have to go outside to the toilet, a fabulously morose landlord, massive packets of pork scratchings, plenty of real beer and single malts, ah the list goes on. A breath of fresh air in Worcester. Slightly disappointed it appeared to be closed on a Sunday afternoon when I returned for my fourth visit. Guess they must have heard I was on my way.

Postal Order, Foregate Street - Sticky little Wetherspoons full of the sort of people who frequent whetherspoons the world over. Handy if you have time to kill while waiting for a train. But that's the best I can do by way of a recommendation.

Ye Olde Talbot, Friar Street - In a good location near town. Service varies from average to excelent. Competitively priced Sunday lunch, meet a bit chewy. Usually guest beers are available, Guinness ok. Worth the second and third visit. Had a tremendous chicken and vegetable pie in there, although it was only backed up with frozen peas and over salty chips.

Oakapple, London Road - Good pint of Banks and a solid Sunday lunch, quality roast potatoes and good selection of starters. Service seemed spot on. Can get busy and a touch rowdy toward the back. Only been once and this pub is a bit out of the way so it may be a while before I can return for a second look.

More amazing to me than the crime itself, is the fact that this guy was able to get away with this level of embezzlement for such a long period. Hopefully this conviction will provide sufficient motivation to all organisations working in the blindness field to plug any further gaps in their financial security.

Outstanding piece concerned with the state of screen reader access to the web. I am not sure I support all the asertions in this post, but plenty of food for thought.

As regular readers will know I recently filed two complaints to UK broadcasters on their failing to provide AD after creating expectation amongst users.

While I had known of the outcome of my complaints through other sources, two weeks after my complaint to Channel 4 and a week after my complaint to the BBC, I have finally had direct responses from both broadcasters.

From: Channel 4
Date: 16 May

Dear Mr Williams, as I am sure you are now aware, due to audience demand we are now audio describing LOST. For all details on our audio described programmes, please see the following link.

http://www.channel4.com/about_c4/signed_programmes.html
--
Viewer Enquiries

From: BBC
Date: 15 May

Dear Dave

Thank you for your email.

Our apologies for the failure of audio description on the programme “The Apprentice”. There was no intention to drop the service, and indeed an audio description track was prepared for this programme. Unfortunately although technical problems were noted before the programme was transmitted, and although we believed we had corrected them, a subsequent review of the tape of the transmitted output revealed them not to have been sucessful.

As the programme was due two repeats, one this weekend on BBC3 and the other, on BBC2 at 7pm on Tuesday 16th May further efforts were made to correct the problems and as far as I can tell, these were successful.
While the outcome of this programme is of course now known, you should be able to watch this repeat without the problems that blighted the original transmission.

I trust this is of help.

regards
--
BBC Reception Advice

Credit should go to both broadcasters for doing everything possible to rectify the problem after the fact. The point remains that problems with AD are not unusual, and the industry needs to up it's game. The old excuses about users not having the technology and there being no demand simply are no longer true.

Labels: TV

"I am not sold on the significance, or indeed novelty, of blogs and pods, but they are with us. Yet equally I believe that the death of print is being overstated, and it is timely to have a little evidence that this is the case."

"on that different planet called Express, the inhabitants have just three main interests in life - house prices, absurd examples of political correctness and Princess Diana."

"You could do a cross-check against the spread of Mockney among people whose original dialect was RP and whose original games had been rugby and cricket, not football."

Brunettes earn less than blondes? What's that all about?

For the media anorak in me, pieces similar to this are the reason I continue to read the Indy.

Labels: TV

I have been pretty bored by the battle of the Apples, but this is amusing.

Not sure if I have blogged this one previously. But the Man Who Fell Asleep never fails to enthrall me. If you are like me and are fascinated by other people's conversations in public spaces then this will be right up your street.

Speaking of voyeurism, UK Big Brother is back for a seventh series on thursday. I am going to try really hard this year not to stoopp to that. He says.

I have not heard of anyone planning to blog from Germany's largest exhibition of AT for blind people this year. Although I plan to keep a close ear on Blogsearch and Google News. You can at least click the link above for a list of exhibitor links.

For the reasons described in Jonathan Mosen's post a couple of days ago, it is important the whole blind community make our voices heard about this. Even if, like me, you are outside the US, the implications of the seeming demise of Web Braille are very worrying indeed.

Labels: Braille

Naturally lots of coverage on this. I quite like this piece from the Beeb which is a decent sumation of the game itself.

It was a rollercoaster for everyone. With eleven million viewers on BBC One, plus however many were watching in pubs up and down the country, England is warming up for the world cup.

My condolences to West Ham fans for their team's defeat in Saturday's cup final. If I am completely honest the Hammers were probably the stronger team over the 120 minutes. The 2005 European champions were definitely stretched and the first half an hour was probably Liverpool's worst of the season.

As an England fan I know only too well it's always gutting to loose on penalties. But at the start of the season who would have tipped West Ham to even be in the FA Cup final at all? And in this year's FA Cup tournament, Liverpool were the best side. So while I reckon West Ham won the Psychological battle on Saturday, Liverpool have been made to work hard over the tournament as a whole against the likes of Man U and Chelsea to take their 7th FA Cup back to anfield.

Stevie G was undoubtedly the difference. And if Liverpool are going to ever win the Premiership then they need to stop pinning their hopes on one player.

I wonder how Trev Brooking is taking it? I've not heard him since the final. :)

Not enough people can blog about this. Jonathan Mosen's post is absolutely on the money in every respect.

Labels: Braille

Asked to watch the Ordinary Boys, Katie Melua and the Beautiful South for nothing? Life at the Beeb can't be all that bad.

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to watch this these days, but as daytime tv goes Today on ITV1 is well loved and a harmless hour of fun. Sad to see it go.

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What Microsoft do not want you to realise is that Windows 98 will continue to work and function normally beyond this date. It is highly likely that if you bought your hardware at the same time as Windows 98 then you probably will not be able to use Windows XP on your old 98 machine anyway.

but, if you have 98 running on an offline machine, and your just using it for playing classic games or wordprocessing, and it aint broke, then don't try to fix it.

If you want to use the internet safely, and take advantage of modern applications, then check your hardware is on the Hardware Compatibility List for Windows XP before running out and buying it.

Who cares?

Although I may as well use this as an excuse to mention Rarsoft who make Winrar which does it for me.

A fantastically comprehensive piece about the AJAX challenge for screenreaders. Someone may want to tell the author that the screenreader from GW Micro is called Window-Eyes, not Windows-Eyes. :)

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

Labels: TV

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

Labels: TV

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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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.

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.

Just goes to show how little thought went into the origenal legislation.

This should be fascinating.

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.

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!

I've seen a couple of these, and BBC One's The Street really is brilliant.

Labels: TV

A well-researched piece from our friends at the Gruniad!

Now that is a podcast!!!

Not for the easily amused ... or should that be not for the easily offended. You figure it out. But I haven't laughed so hard in ages. Behind the mirth are more serious points than one could wave a white stick at. This has got cutting edge written all over it.

Damon Rose is a much better producer than he is a presenter. And a quick blog search reveals that Damon is gaining a deserved following.

This is pure genius from the Beeb, but not everyone will be amused. I truely hope this podcast flies!

"It must be a terrible thing to be blind but you never hear them complaining."

This kind of quote does nothing to enhance the quality of life for those aflicted with this horrific darkness. Oh come on! It must be a terrible thing to be raped, wrongfully imprisoned, or be victim of any one of thousands of injustices. But being blind in a developed country in the early 21st century? Is that really such a terrible thing? Besides I bet 3 million quid takes the edge off it a bit!

Rather than printing quotes like this the Daily Record would be better throwing it's weight behind efforts which actually make a difference such as the Right to Read campaign.

This is extremely important. Carol has a lot of respect amongst educationalists and TV viewers in the UK. Surely there are stacks of other ways Carol could make a living. Do a couple more of them Test the Nation and Big Quizz shows for the Beeb and Sky One. Get channel for to renegociate her Countdown contract and market old episodes of Countdown to Challenge TV giving Carol a percentage. Unsecured personal loans are an abismal way to make a living. We love ya Carol, you can do better than this.

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Great that Channel 4 have acted so quickly. Hopefully this will send a clear message to other broadcasters that people desire and are listening to audio description.

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It's here, and it rocks!

Well ok it's actually not in the shops in the UK yet as far as I can tell, but you can get N91 in Singapore although the TV ads are hitting UK screens. The conclusion from the boys at allaboutsymbian.com is that yes it's not perfect but this smartphone really is a daddy! Just holding my breath on the accessability front, still no word from Nuance or CF on making this baby talk yet. But surely S60 3rd Edition is the logical next step for Talks and Mobile Speak. Unless CF is dropping Simbian to concentrate on Windows Mobile 5 smartphone edition.

Following an exchange on Wednesday 3 May involving myself, Channel 4 and RNIB regarding the lack of audio description at the start of season two of the ABC drama Lost, I decided to send the following message to my MP, Michael Foster, the member for Worcester.

The amount of feedback I have had about this has been fantastic. Thank you all!

I welcome any other suggestions for how best to advocate for an increase in the amount of optional audio description available via TV and DVD.

Many thanks.

Dear Michael Foster,

I am a young professional blind person who recently moved to the Bath Road area of your Worcester constituency.

A recent report published by Ofcom, the communications industry regulator, regarding the "Media Literacy of Disabled People" found:

"In comparison to all UK adults under 65, disabled people aged under 65 watch more TV, listen to more radio, and use the internet and mobile phones to a similar extent."

http://www.ofcom.org.uk/advice/media_literacy/medlitpub/medlitpubrss/disabled/

As a blind person who does all of the above, I and many of my fellow constituents definitely fall into this demographic.

Audio description is an optional additional commentary that describes what is happening on the screen or the stage for people such as myself who have difficulty seeing the action, body language, facial expressions, costume or scenery. More information about audio description, including how to switch it on and off, can be found from the RNIB's web site.

http://www.rnib.org.uk/xpedio/groups/public/documents/publicwebsite/public_audiodescription.hcsp

Ofcom are currently carrying out a vital consultation which will affect future audio description targets and as we live in an aging society which has an increasing number of partially sighted and blind people, it is important that Ofcom make sure these audio description targets are equitable.

Did you know for example that under existing requirements only 8% of the output of the major channels is available audio described compared with the announcement from Ofcom in July 2004 which will increase subtitling to around 80% by the end of the next parliament!

With two million people suffering from some kind of sight loss in the UK, how can the communications industry regulator justify only 8% of TV output being audio described when 80% will be subtitled. Are people with hearing loss 10 times more deserving than people with sight loss?

If Ofcom are permitted to allow this obscene inequality to continue, the industry regulator will not only be failing the industry itself, but government and most importantly disabled consumers.

I urge yourself and your party, who are supporters of social justice, to make good on your manifesto commitments to equality by showing your support for the RNIB's campaign for at least 20% of TV output to be audio described by digital switchover.

Worcester is home to a world leading developer of computer software for blind people (Dolphin Computer Access based on the Blackpole Trading Estate)

www.dolphincomputeraccess.com

Worcester is also home to a national school catering for people who are blind and visually impaired (New College on Whittington Road).

www.rnibncw.ac.uk

It is reasonable to anticipate that the number of blind and low vision constituents in Worcester is already increasing and will continue to do so in the near future.

With it's strong ties to the blind community, Worcester should be a centre of excellence and be leading the way in advocating for services for people with sight loss. It is imperative that you and your government take appropriate action to make sure Ofcom do not leave this inequality unchecked.

Below I include a recent complaint I submitted to Channel 4 after the channel dropped audio description at the start of the second season of a high profile primetime drama.

Yours sincerely,

Labels: TV

From: Dave Williams [mailto:home@davewilliams.co.uk]
Sent: Tuesday, May 02, 2006 11:00 PM
To: Viewer Enquiries at Channel 4
Subject: Audio Description for Lost season two?

Dear Sir/Madam,

For your information I am 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.


Having been left on the edge of my seat after enjoying all 26 audio described episodes of the first season of the US smash series Lost on Channel 4 (Sky Channel 994) I was thrilled when Channel 4 announced they would be screening season 2 of Lost in May.

Often the only way to access AD is when the series is televised, as audio description hardly ever makes it onto DVD. Certainly in the case of Lost the audio description for series one was not available on DVD. I do not expect it to be available on the season two DVDs either.

As Channel 4 had broadcast audio description for season one, and subsequently heavily promoted the upcoming broadcast of season two it seemed reasonable to assume that audio description would be broadcast on Channel 4 with season two also.

I was bitterly disappointed when I sat down on Tuesday evening after months of build-up to discover no audio description for the first episode of Lost season 2. Surely this is a mistake?

This was made worse by the fact that the first episode of season two of Lost begins with a five minute sequence which has no dialog.

Audio description is an important service providing additional information to blind and partially sighted people about on-screen action which is not self-evident from the audio alone.

I appreciate that only some broadcasters are obligated to broadcast only a small percentage of their output with audio description. However for Channel 4, a broadcaster with a public service remit having offered a prime time series with the profile of Lost with AD, only to drop the AD for the second season seems incomprehensible.

Regards,

Labels: TV