Dave Williams

Some personal blogs are more occasional than others. Certainly Davewilliams.co.uk has been less frequent of late. Like many floggers, I do not always have the inclination to blog. Either, nothing blogworthy happens, I am too busy, get out of the blogging routine or I just can't be bothered! I'm not going to promise to blog more. If I'm not blogging it is probably because I'm zonked in front of the TV rather than blogging! That said, I have a few minutes to share a couple of TV related bits and pieces.

I was recently prevented from paying my licence fee online as apparently the TV licensing database cannot cope with the fact that some blind people receive correspondence in Braille and the address for the Braille transcription is different from one's home address. Ah well half an hour on the phone later and I'm all set to pick up the remote.

For the record, I am not opposed to the licence fee, although the criteria for who should pay it seems somewhat arbitrary when one considers the volume of BBC content available online free from outside the UK. Moreover, the advent of the very excellent BBC iPlayer allowing one to catch up with programs for the past 7 days would seem to indicate that anyone in the UK with an internet connection (not just a television) would also be liable for the licence fee?

Incidentally, 3 years ago, Geoff Shang, Jeff Haris and I came up with something slightly similar to the iPlayer for ACB Radio. Great to see that the ACB Radio Replay service is still going strong:

ACB Radio Replay.

Anyway, When I inadvertently stumble across a a wrist slittingly depressing episode of BBC One's primetime soap EastEnders, the tacky tastic game show serving warm up for the National Lottery, or yet another episode of the Weakest Link, I am left wondering what the hell the BBC is playing at with our licence payers' money?

That said, generally I am supportive of the licence fee. When one considers the breadth and depth of the BBC's output. It is difficult to imagine any other broadcaster in the world commissioning a comparable range of content. And good on ya BBC for telling those greedy Ausies to stick it when Channel Ten hiked up the price for Neighbours. I'm sure the good folk of Erinsborough will be just fine along side Home and Away, on the UK's Channel Five. Isn't Five owned by RTL now anyway?

Back on the Beeb, lately I have been delighted by the return to our screens by the larger than life character DCI Gene Hunt in the Life on Mars spin-off Ashes to Ashes. Proceeded on Thursdays by the marvellously morose Grantly Budgen in that hopelessly optimistic of all school dramas Waterloo road.

I have recently enjoyed Tropic of Capricorn concluding this past weekend on BBC Two. Following Equator this is Simon Reeve's second televised travel log circumnavigating the globe. He's no Palin but that's probably a good thing is it allows the audience to focus on the place rather than the presenter.

Moving away from the Beeb, if you like your TV travel a bit more gritty then Dave Gorman's America Unchained is well worth a watch. Now available on DVD and being repeated on FilmFour and probably available on 4OD although I've not checked.

Speaking of grit. Channel 4's Shameless is well into it's fifth series and still well worth a giggle. Although for me Shameless has lost some of it's original charm. Frank and the other characters on the Chatsworth Estate have gone a bit preachy, and they are making a bit too much use of fantasy reality sequences which always put me in mind of the movie version of Billy Liar.

Glad to report: Ashes to Ashes, Waterloo Road, Tropic of Capricorn and Shameless are all audio described. Which is more than can be said for any of the films playing at the Worcester Odian! And if the blogs are to be believed AD is coming soon to an iPlayer near you!


Next time on DaveWilliams.co.uk...

Hrrors of Hotpoint,

Nws from the Preston front,

My little sister's getting married!

All the best.

Labels: Opinion, TV

Possibly futile but worth registering one's disgust!

Few broadcasters have done more than the BBC to set standards by which others are measured. However, this latest set of guidelines from auntie to homogenise TV credits sequences seems a tad over the top?

The credits, as well as providing important and appropriate attribution information about the people who made TV productions possible, are in many cases a natural pause allowing one to sit back, enjoy the show's theme music reflect on the programme past. While I do not have sufficient eye sight to read the credits for my favourite TV shows, I can recollect countless examples from over the years where programme makers and writers have come up with original ways to express ideas around the end credits. Some of these have been hilarious, thought-provoking and even moving.

One of the most seminal moments in British sitcom history was the moving sequence at the end of Blackadder series IV, which if I have correctly understood the new requirements, would not be possible in the future?

Does all this bollocks apply to repeats too?

Labels: Opinion, TV

If you have ever experienced difficulties seeing the menus on digital TV set top boxes in the UK then it may be worth your while helping the RNIB in their quest to gather more information and formulate policy on this issue.

Labels: Disability, Technology, TV

Note to self, must not prejudge Channel 4 documentary on young people who are blind. Probably safer to avoid it like the plague!

I am really trying extremely hard to remain optimistic about this documentary. I can't help dreading it though and that is not because like one of the featured students in the Channel 4 show I too was suspended from the RNCB. Prob not best to go into the reasons why at this stage. Safe to say it was not big and was not clever. Although pretty funny depending on your perspective.

The programme to go out at 9PM on Monday may actually leave viewers with the cutting edge impression that blind people may actually be having sex? My goodness Ray Charles would turn in his grave! What's the world coming to!

Seriously though, are people with disabilities just overly sensitive about tv documentaries like this? What sort of documentary would we really be happy with? Do blind people need/want a documentary at all? What actually was the original purpose of the programme? Is it to educate the public about disability? Is it meant to be car-crash TV to entertain the curious? Is it to promote a positive image of disability? In which case why not have some positive role models who are disabled as characters on Hollyoaks or presenting on T4?

Oh so many questions and too few answers. However "heart-warming" and Animal Hospital-like the documentary turns out to be, I am sure that plenty of blind people will be tuning in to find out which stereotype is being portrayed this time. Yes, against my better judgement, I will probably end up being one of them.

I sincerely hope I am proved completely wrong!!!

Labels: Opinion, TV

I have previously whinged at great length on this blog about telcos and media companies diversifying in new areas and the seemingly detrimental affect that often has on existing core services. I remember a time when if you had a problem with Orange the customer service representative would at least make some attempt to own the issue, give you their first name, call you back etc. And if they couldn't solve the problem they'd escalate it up the chain of command so eventually one would end up speaking with someone who knew what they were talking about.

Orange currently has a promotion where if you are subscribe to a mobile phone service plan costing more than £30 per month Orange will bundle home broadband internet access without any additional charge. I have a qualifying mobile phone service plan with Orange and I recently called to enquire about the details of the broadband offer. One of the main reasons I have stayed with my existing internet service provider PlusNet is due to the ISP's extras particularly inclusive hosting facilities. I have a couple of domains hosted with PlusNet, and several email boxes. PlusNet also provide PHP and MySQL services which I do not use as much as I would like but it is reassuring to know that they are there should I need them. My call to Orange was to establish if any hosting facilities were available with Orange broadband. I needn't have wasted my time calling Orange, no one seemed to have a clue what I was talking about.

So when the Orange TV service comes to sets in the UK the very best of luck if you have any technical enquiries.

Labels: Technology, TV

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Anyone who watches BBC TV news will recognise Bowen. I am sure I remember something about my sister going to school with his sister. anyway, that aside, he is a well respected journalist, and even if the Independent are plugging his book, this piece provides some food for thought on the subject of war reporting and is definitely worth a read.

Labels: TV

Will be interesting to see if Sky audio describe series 3 of Lost following the campaign which reversed the Channel 4 decision earlier this year.

Labels: TV

Unofficial sources at Sky tell me that this product has been in development for over a year. In view of the fact that the existing Sky remote already has a rubber backing and large rubbery buttons and is pretty easy to hold and use, it will be interesting to see how much demand there is for the new Easy Grip remote. Come on Sky, does your market research tell you that the best thing you can do for the disabled community is create an Easy Grip remote control? Such remotes probably already exist and can probably be configured to emulate the Sky handset. So is there really a need for this new handset?

Clearly there is a shortage of ideas at Sky, so I have created a list of my own. All of these suggestions would not be costly to implement, and could make a huge difference to disabled customers of Sky.

1. Offering a choice of colour schemes and font sizes for the onscreen EPG would be useful for partially sighted people.

2. An automatic onscreen indicator for availability of subtitling would be useful for someone with hearing loss.

3. A more flexible time-out period could provide someone with dexterity issues with a longer period for keying in channel numbers.

4. Make the Sky Plus live pause feature free to people with reading difficulties.

5. An audio indicator to go along side the low battery and programme reminder alerts.

A decent software engineer could probably achieve most of the above using the existing platform inside a couple of months. It is weather or not the political will exists at Sky to make these things a reality.

Making the EPG talk, clearly that is a bigger project which may require new hardware and not something anyone seriously expects over night. but we can live in hope.

Labels: TV

For anyone in the UK under the age of 40, TOTP has been a constant in our lives. After the final show due to be screened this evening on BBC Two, TOTP will be no longer.

Labels: TV

The Cinema Audio Description listings service from YourLocalCinema.com has been short-listed for a National Lottery Award! Making it to the finals will really help spread awareness of audio described cinema in the UK.

Please vote for Audio Description listings.

Just click the link above, type your name, select your local cinema, and click Vote Now!

The overall winners will be announced during a special BBC National Lottery television show in the autumn. Voting could help the service to secure further funding, which will help to keep it going. (Their funding runs out at Christmas!

Voting tells the Lottery board, and the UK film industry, that audio description and audio description listings really matter and should be continued.

It is a great opportunity to use the exposure to remind the film industry that
this access issue needs to be kept high on the agenda.

Thank you.

Labels: TV

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

You better believe it baby! :)

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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

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

Labels: TV

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.

Labels: TV

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.

Labels: TV

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

Labels: TV

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.

Labels: TV

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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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

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You're kidding right?

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This is the first time I have heard mention of improved Sound with HD TV. Anyone got any more info? Apparently Sky haven't.

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I came to this pretty late, missing most of the first series. But the second series has me completely hooked. The Apprentice is a satisfying blend of reality TV featuring larger than life Characters, mixed with fascinating insights into some of the best and worst ways to conduct business.

Labels: TV

Nice one!!! I can't wait! Just a tiny bit scared it'll go the same way as Only Fools with endless xmas specials for the next 20 years. Keeping everything crossed that it'll all be ok.

Labels: TV

Definitely one of my childhood favourites!

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It's a sad world when the host of Countdown finally faces his final canumdrum.

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I'm not a huge fan of the honours system, however I am a big fan of many of those who have been recognised this time around.

Labels: TV