Access All – episode 100
Presented by Emma Tracey
EMMA- It
takes me a long time to get to Broadcasting House for the recording of this
podcast. I live in Fife in Scotland, which is one train to Edinburgh and then
another train to London. And I often take the sleeper train, so I thought you
might like to hear a little bit of my journey:
I
have just arrived in my room on the sleeper train. I’ve got my back to the door
and on the left are very skinny bunkbeds, of which I’m on the bottom bunk.
Nobody is on the top bunk, which is good. Then on the right-hand side there’s a
bit of a wall, and then there’s a wall with hangers on it which I will hang my
coat on and my outfit for tomorrow. And the room is the length of the beds,
which is not particularly long. And right to the other end to the door is a
window with a blind on it, and a sink underneath, a towel underneath that and
the bin. I will introduce you to the talking toilet:
TOILET- The
toilet door is opening. Please lock the door. The toilet door is locked.
EMMA- It’s
nice and bright. It’s warm. We’re still in the station, and I’m going to get
ready for bed.
MUSIC- Theme
music.
EMMA- Hello,
this is Access All, the BBC’s weekly disability and mental health podcast. I’m
Emma Tracey and, can you believe it, this is our 100th episode! 100, amazing.
Now, this week we’ve got a real treat for you because we will be speaking to
deaf actress, Rose Ayling-Ellis about how she has changed the conversation
about BSL in the UK. And we’ll chat with Rose about our soon to be launching
BSL videos of highlights of this very podcast. Plus we’ll be taking a look
behind the scenes of Access All. You’ve already heard my journey on the sleeper
train to Scotland. And you’ll even get to meet the transcriber of this podcast,
Alison Kingsley. She’s been doing it for a long time and absolutely loves it,
so it’ll be lovely to talk to her.
We
have been asking our guests for ages what the best advice is that another
disabled person has given them, so we will be playing some of those. They sound
a bit like this:
BRADLEY- I
think the best advice I ever got given was from – do you know Chloé Hayden…
EMMA- Yes.
BRADLEY- …from
Heartbreak High?
EMMA- Australian
autistic actress.
BRADLEY- Yeah.
And all she could say was, “There are going to be hard times, struggles, but
you knowing yourself and finding the beauty in you and beauty around others
will make you flourish”. And since she said that, I’m not kidding, I feel like
I’ve just accepted who I am. And once I accept who I am then I’m hoping that
the industry can accept who I am as well.
FRANK- Hi,
Access All. My name is Frank Gardner. I am the BBC security correspondent and
I’ve got a spinal cord injury after a gunshot wound. The best advice I had was
what I was given while I was still in hospital at Stanmore, which is from
somebody who also had a spinal cord injury, and that was: as soon as you
possibly can get the heck out of hospital. Just get out as quickly as you
possibly can; not just for your own mental benefit, but also because there are
so many hospital borne infections, or at least there were at the time, and it’s
just much better and healthier for you to be at home, not in hospital.
ASHLEY- I
think the best piece of advice another person with a disability has given me is
to lean into it. I work in comedy and I’ve grown up in stand-up comedy, and the
best stand-up comedians I know are the people who lean into the things that set
them apart, and they don’t try and hide it and they don’t try and conform it.
But they say, look at this, and this is how I embrace it. So, I kind of try and
do that every day.
EMMA- And
there you heard Bradley Riches from Heartstopper, BBC correspondent Frank
Gardner, and comedian Ashley Storrie. I like that bit from Ashley at the end:
lean into what’s different about you. And that’s kind of why I’m here
presenting this podcast, because I’ve leaned into the blindness, yes I have.
Now,
you’ve already heard my journey on the sleeper train to London from Scotland.
And this is a bit of a theme of this week’s show, this look behind the scenes
of how…
DAMON- Sorry,
could you just go ahead and say that word again, Emma? A bit of a peme was
that? I didn’t catch it.
EMMA- [Laughs]
why are you in here? I don’t usually have you right in front of me. You’re
usually…
DAMON- Didn’t
catch it.
EMMA- …in
my ear.
DAMON- Go
on, the listener wants to hear from me.
EMMA- What?
No, you’re…listen, this is the editor, Damon Rose, who thankfully is usually in
a different room. But he’s here today just trying to put me off my stride I
think.
DAMON- That’s
usually the kind of thing that Emma gets down the headphones.
EMMA- Say
that word again.
DAMON- But
more nicely.
EMMA- Er,
nicely? That’s kind of debatable to be honest. So, we’re going to go a bit more
behind the scenes. We’ve been taking some sneaky recordings from some of the
meetings that we’ve been having. Let’s hear a bit of that:
[Clip]
DAMON- Can
we just check where everybody is with the edit at the moment? Alex?
ALEX- Yeah,
I’ve just finished the Rose interview and it’s ready to go.
DAMON- Great.
Drew?
DREW- Yeah,
I’m just editing Emma’s journey in on the train.
EMMA- I
hope you’re keeping in the talking toilet?
DREW- I’ll
make sure the talking toilet makes it in.
EMMA- Thank
you.
DAMON- That’s
good [laughter] Niamh?
NIAMH- I’m
in the middle of doing the Alison edit. I need to get that to about seven
minutes at the moment but yeah, we’re on track.
[End of clip]
EMMA- So,
Damon, seeing as you have come in here I will ask you some questions, if that’s
okay?
DAMON- Uh-huh.
EMMA- Why
are we going behind the scenes? Like, what’s the point in looking behind Access
All? Maybe people just want, like, a polished show, perfection.
DAMON- [Laughs]
well, people are always really interested to know how things work. What I’d
like to talk about, I suppose, is to go back to basics and explain what we’re
here for.
EMMA- Do
you see the way the editor changed my question?
DAMON- [Laughs].
EMMA- Literally
I asked him one question and he answered a different question. What are we trying
to do here, Damon the editor, with Access All? What are we trying to achieve?
DAMON- Say
it again, say it again but not…don’t…let’s take some of the humour out of it.
EMMA- [Laughs]
keep that in, Dave.
DAMON- What?
No, no
don’t! Come on, we’ve got till 12 o’clock
so we’ve got to get on with this. Panicking. So, you and me and other people
over the years who have been doing disability projects at the BBC online and on
podcast and on air for quite a long time now – too long, I’m not even going to
put a time on it, it's almost embarrassing – so we’ve evolved in all that time
I think. To begin with back in the 2000s we were very cheeky, we were very
humorous, we were very much trying to reflect a group of people, disabled
people who weren’t reflected at all. But things have changed quite a lot now I
think. I think we can say…
EMMA- Have
they though?
DAMON- I
think we can say this is a lot more disabled people on TV.
EMMA- Certain
types of disabled people.
DAMON- Certain
types of disabled people.
EMMA- On
TV.
DAMON- And
we seem more open in talking about things. In the same way that everybody can
say the word sex now, and that’s fine on the radio, you think back to the 1980s
when I Want Your Sex was out and Radio 1 weren’t allowed to say the title
[music plays: I Want Your Sex]. Lots of things have become less taboo.
EMMA- Yes,
but we used to, sometimes some of the more tricky disability words were allowed
in our podcast through comedy and through, sort of, grass roots-y chat, that we
would never put in the podcast now.
DAMON- Uh,
yes, and that’s because I think, you know, we often hear about people, editors
who edit older things for sensitivity. I think if we were still doing a
programme that we were doing 20 years ago I think people would be raising the
eyebrows a little too much. Also I think I have come in my old age to believe
that we need to bring more and more non-disabled people into this. We live
alongside non-disabled people. In the early days it was, I suppose, more about
let’s hear disabled people’s voices as they are, who they are. But now we’re
seeing it in a different context where there’s more people from lots of
different backgrounds.
EMMA- I
worry that we’ve actually made our podcast sound less good than the one that we
did years ago.
DAMON- No,
not at all because we’re bringing more people along with us. Disability, as you
often say, Em, is a journey. And what we’re trying to do now I think is get
people at all points along that journey, people who think of disability as
being, you know, a part of their identity and a part of their culture.
Absolutely spot on. But there’s also people the other end who are just coming
into disability, they’ve perhaps just had a disabled child, they’ve perhaps
just become disabled themselves, and they need a bit more of a gentle
introduction to where they are in life. And perhaps we can add something new
and interesting that they’ve never thought about before.
EMMA- I
hope so.
DAMON- That’s
surely it. You can say goodbye to me now.
EMMA- Niamh
is saying Drew had made a really good point and she’s about to tell me what it
is: back in the early days of you and I working on disability focused podcasts
it was one of the only online spaces for disabled people, and now there are
many, and many for people in different parts of the journey. There’s lots of
social media, different TikTok, Facebook, Twitter, X etc. The landscape has
changed massively, and I guess it means that we do more need to be a coverall
and meeting them where they are. Is that kind of what you meant, Drew? Yes.
Damon,
this has been weird. Here’s to 100 more Access All episodes.
DAMON- Thank
you very much.
EMMA- When
we were planning our 100th episode we all were wondering who we would love to
get back in the studio. Who have we had on in the last two years who’s really
made an impression on us. And we all agreed that we would love to talk to Rose
Ayling-Ellis. So, she is back and she is here. Hi Rose!
ROSE- Hello,
and thank you for having me.
EMMA- Oh,
thank you so much for returning to the podcast. What’s your day like today?
ROSE- Oh,
my day today, it’s quite nice today. It’s a nice morning, just a bit cloudy.
But it’s my day off so I got a filming tomorrow and the rest of the week I’ve
got more filming, so I need to stock up my fridge, get some food in.
EMMA- Right.
ROSE- I’ve
got no food, so that is my plan today, to do a bit of food shopping after this
podcast [laughs].
EMMA- Even
famous people like Rose Ayling-Ellis have to go to the supermarket. That’s good
to know. Rose Ayling-Ellis of course is a deaf actress and model who wowed the
judges on Strictly and who…
ROSE- Model?
EMMA- Why,
are you not a model? It’s in my notes. Were you never a model?
ROSE- Model?
Um, I could try out modelling, but no [laughs].
EMMA- Okay,
I’ll start that again then [laughter].
ROSE- I
love it. It’s really funny.
EMMA- Why
would you think being a model would be funny to you? I mean, I’m blind but I’m
told you're very beautiful.
ROSE- [Laughs]
thank you. I think I might have done some photoshoots for a magazine and stuff,
but that’d be a bit more… Anyway, it doesn’t really matter, does it?
EMMA- No,
no.
ROSE- Sorry,
for the interruption [laughs].
EMMA- No,
not at all. It’s all fine. And actually maybe you’ll do some modelling in the
future, so maybe we’re just ahead of the game. Okay. Rose Ayling-Ellis of
course you are an actor, a deaf actor who wowed the judges and the public on
Strictly and who undoubtedly has helped to change the conversation around
British Sign Language, or BSL in the UK. How have you been since we spoke to
you last? I think you were on August last year?
ROSE- Yes.
I’ve been really good. I think this year is a year of focusing on my acting,
because I’ve done quite a lot of work on advocating for BSL and with my
documentary and stuff, and I feel like I need to have a good balance because
yes, I can be advocating, but actually I’d like to do my work too.
EMMA- You’re
using BSL when you’re acting and seeing BSL in the theatre and on TV and
online, is all, I think, all advocating really, whether you like it or not,
isn’t it?
ROSE- Yeah.
EMMA- So,
you have just won the best West End debut performance at the Stage Theatre
Awards. How does it feel to have won that award?
ROSE- It
was amazing. I felt so proud of myself because this was a role that I wasn’t
really speaking in most of it, I was just using BSL the whole time. Only a
small section I spoke. It’s nice to be awarded with that because it does just
show that people in the audience do understand what I was trying to express on
the stage, and I don’t need to verbally state everything. It got a caption,
which means hearing people or people who don’t know BSL can still follow the
story and then laugh at a certain thing I did.
EMMA- Quite
a trailblazer you are. And that was for As You Like It, wasn’t it?
ROSE- Yeah.
EMMA- Speaking
of new experiences, we on Access All are always very, very conscious that we’re
an audio podcast, and we do have a transcription which a lot of people say is
useful to them for their experience. But it’s not perfect for people whose
first language is BSL. Very soon we will launch our own set of British Sign
Language videos on the BBC Sounds YouTube channel. We’re going to start with
six of them, and they will be highlights from some of the interviews that we’ve
done here on Access All over the last few months. How do you feel about BBC
kind of attempting to make podcasts a bit more accessible to BSL s?
ROSE- I
think it’s brilliant. My dad said to me that he listens to podcasts all the
time, and he said the one thing that makes them quite different to TV and film
is that you can talk about a subject very in depth, that you can go really deep
in one subject, and not other media does that, but podcasts do it. So, I think
having a BSL interpreter on the side makes that us a connection to these things.
Because I want to learn about different subjects in depth that I wouldn’t learn
it from film or TV, but podcasts I could do. So, I think it’s fantastic that
the BBC is making it BSL accessible for deaf people.
EMMA- Well,
I mean, I think that’s what we’re hoping is that people will see this and we’re
the first ones to do it in the BBC, but we’re hoping that it will catch on and
other podcasts will do it too.
ROSE- Yes,
it’s a start. I just don’t want, what we see quite often is a start saying,
yeah, we’ve done this, great, good job, finished. No, you need to keep doing
more.
EMMA- And
have you ever tried to, like, follow a podcast with the transcripts or
anything? Or do you just not see podcasts as being for you at all?
ROSE- Annie
Mac, I did a podcast with her. Before she interviewed me she never really had a
transcript, but when she interviewed me she started to realise okay, I need to
make my podcast accessible, and now she has transcripts for everything. So,
when I listen to it and I can read the podcast transcript at the same time it’s
great, I really enjoyed it. But I want more of that.
EMMA- Shall
we return to BSL? I mean, we've had the BSL act, and there is a BSL GCSE I’m
told in the works.
ROSE- Yes.
EMMA- BSL
is really having a moment, and you’ve been a big part of that moment. How do
you and the community and us, we all keep that going and keep the momentum up
around BSL?
ROSE- I
think people are starting to accept that BSL is a language, and I think a lot
of people want to learn BSL. And the amount of messages I have from people
saying, oh, it should be taught in school, it should be taught in school. I’m
like yeah, we’ve been trying to do that for a long time. And now it’s happening
because I think we’re getting more from the hearing community and
that’s what’s pushed the message a bit bigger.
EMMA- You
were live on prime time BBC One talking about it, or everywhere talking about
it. And we kind of do see you, whether you like it or not, Rose, as a bit of an
unofficial ambassador for BSL. How do you feel about that?
ROSE- I
don’t know. It’s a bit of a mixed feeling. And I’m sure it is a mixed feeling
for anybody to be told that. I think one, it’s fantastic because I’ve been
waiting for that person to be on prime time TV and push all of this work. I
feel it’s great. But then at the same time we do have a bit of pressure on it
as well because I can’t work the bench for every single deaf people because
every deaf people is so different from each other.
EMMA- Good
to recognise that. Well, let’s talk about your acting again because there’s so
much that we can’t talk about that we’re told, that you’re doing lots and lots
of different projects. But we can talk about the Code of Silence, the ITV
police drama, where you play a hospital worker who becomes a lipreader for the
police. What was it like playing that character?
ROSE- We
haven’t started filming it until this summer.
EMMA- Ah.
ROSE- But
I’m really excited to play this because I think it plays around with the
stereotype of lipreading. A lot of people assume that us lipreading is like a
superpower, we can lipread anyone 200m away from us; which is impossible, by
the way. But it plays around with that, and that’s what excites me about this
role.
EMMA- And
are you a kick-arse lipreader? Do you sit and lipread people when you're people
watching? Or do you lipread, I don’t know, of the Royal Family when
they’re being filmed coming out of church or whatever?
ROSE- Do
you know what? I’m actually a terrible lipreader.
EMMA- [Laughs]
ROSE- I
actually need my glasses or I have no idea what’s going on. No, I’m not really
a very good lipreader, no [laughs].
EMMA- Do
you have friends that do though? Is it something that is a kind of a thing?
Like me, I can be in a restaurant and my husband always laughs at me because I
can be listening to two of the conversations going on in the restaurant and
having a conversation with him at the same time. Is it something that deaf
people you know do use as a, I don’t know, fun tool or whatever?
ROSE- Lipreading
is not 100%. 80% of the time you’re guessing what they’re saying. You’ve also
got take the factor of their body language, the subject they’re talking about,
the lighting, what the room is like, how busy it is, how noisy, all of this.
And there are certain words that, for example elephant, colourful and I love
you have exactly the same lip pattern.
EMMA- [Laughs]
right, so you really could get the wrong end of the stick. So, Rose, before you
go, it’s our 100th episode this week and we’ve been asking disabled celebrities
to share with us the best piece of advice that another disabled person has
given them. What would your advice be? What did someone tell you that’s really
made an impact on you, a deaf or disabled person?
ROSE- Ooh,
okay. Oh my god, you’re putting me on the spot. I’m now having to flash back my
whole life of meeting all the deaf people giving me all sorts of advice.
EMMA- [Laughs]
ROSE- I
had this one lady called Charlie, and she’s lovely, and she used to teach me
acting when I was very young at the Youth Centre. And she had always told me to,
“Just don’t worry about other people, just do you and keep going for it and
keep carrying on”. I think I don’t put pressure on myself too much, that’s what
she always told me, so I don’t need to feel like I have to represent for all
deaf people, I have to make change for all deaf people at all times.
EMMA- Thank
you so much, Rose, for that really interesting advice that you got from a
fellow BSL . Here’s a little selection of advice from other friends of the
pod:
MOLLY- Hiya,
it’s Molly from The Traitors here. The best piece of advice a fellow disabled
person has given me is: it’s the ability, not the disability, that counts. I
think it just made me realise I should focus on the things I can do, not the
things I can’t. And yeah, it just changed my mindset into a really positive
one.
GARY- Hello,
my name’s Gary O’Donoghue, and I’m the BBC’s senior North America
correspondent, and I’m totally blind. The best piece of advice I’ve ever been
given by another disabled person is: you can’t fight all the battles. We all
know there are a million different barriers, a million different
microaggressions we have to deal with; take on the big ones, let the small ones
go and save your sanity.
RUTH- I
think the best piece of advice I’ve ever been given from a disabled person,
there’s actually two things; number one is more serious than the there one. So,
number one is: always think about the next person coming into a job after you.
So, I will always want to make sure that whatever job I do, whatever acting
job, writing job, that I leave it more accessible than when I found it so that
the next person that comes in who’s got a disability has an easier time, and
who doesn’t have to worry about this kind of stuff. So, that was one piece of
advice.
The
second was: don’t be afraid to annoy people [laughs]. Like, I’m not telling you
who’s given me that piece of advice, but yeah, if me asking for access
requirements is annoying then so be it. Yeah, both great pieces of advice and
both that I use a lot.
EMMA- We
finished with Ruth Madeley there, one of my absolute faves. And she had two
fantastic pieces of advice. I love the last one in particular: be annoying. So,
I have total leeway now to be annoying. Excellent. That’s not going to be hard
for me. Thank you Ruth.
Here
I am in the Access All office, and I’m getting ready to interview somebody
who’s very, very important to the show. It’s Alison who makes the transcript.
So that I know the questions that I’m going to ask and what I need to cover in
this I need a script. Now, I used to read it off my laptop with a screen
reader, so a synthetic voice talking in my ear and a braille display. But
technology fell down a couple of times and it was a bit slower than I would
like, so I’ve started to braille bits of script and questions onto a series of
cue cards. [Taps cards] these are my cue cards, just little flash cards that
you use for studying or whatever. And I use a brailler, a Perkins brailler,
which is like a very old-fashioned braille typewriter. So, braille has six dots
in two rows of three, so this has six keys [taps keys], two rows of three. It
has a space bar, and it has a back space, and it has a down line, and it has a
roller, and it has a bring back to the beginning of the line button, and that
is basically it. It’s made of metal, it’s got a handle, it’s very heavy. It’s
very, very old-school so I’ve gone very low tech on this.
So,
I’m going to put the card in, and I just want to show you how noisy it is.
There’s no electronics in this at all, it’s just a typewriter. So, I’ve rolled
the card in [pinging sound], that’s the down line button so that’s even quite
noisy. So, I’m in a booth a little bit away from everybody because it’s really
noisy. I’m just going to start writing this one out. Here we go [noisy typing],
I’m going to write Alison, I’m going to write one so I know which card I’m on
for the Alison interview. And I’ll tell you what, braille is very big and these
cards are very small, so I write in the most ridiculous shorthand. With the
questions I will just say something like, ‘how transcribe’ question mark. So, ‘how
do you transcribe the podcast, Alison?’ that will be. But I just need little
keywords that I can glance my fingers over and I’ll know what question. Because
I know it all in my head anyway. And then if there’s longer pieces of script
I’ll write those out as well. I just bring these little cue cards into the
studio which means I don’t have two sets of headphones on, because I’ve already
got headphones on to hear what the producers are saying and everything, so it
means I don’t have two sets. I don’t want to have big tech on my lap, and I
don’t have to worry about batteries running out or anything. And actually it’s
a lot less stressful.
Any
other questions, Drew?
DREW- No.
Just watching you do it the only thing that came to mind was when you’re
rolling the card in there are two sort of, like, the old-school drying rollers
that they used to use, back before we had tumble dryers and air drying, where
you sort of press your clothes through.
EMMA- [Laughs]
DREW- And
you having your fingers that close to it had me a little bit on edge that if…
EMMA- [Laughs]
DREW- …if
you role your fingers in it, ooh.
EMMA- No,
I don’t believe there has even been a rolling accident with a brailler that
I’ve heard of. What used to happen though, and what happened to me at blindy
boarding school was I was little and a big girl was big, and she walking – tall
I mean, big – and she was walking with the brailler and walked straight into my
forehead with the back bit there.
DREW- Ooh!
EMMA- I
had like a tennis ball on my forehead for weeks after that. So, there were
those sorts of incidents. I mean, I wouldn’t want to drop this on my foot or
anything.
DREW- No,
that is big and heavy.
EMMA- It’s
really, really heavy. So, we have one in the office and I just keep it there
and use it in the office.
DREW- Yeah,
it looks like one of those industrial revolution factory machines, but just
sort of shrunk down a little bit. It’s big sort of green, almost sort of cast
metal that’s sort of screwed together. It does look, yeah, very hefty.
EMMA- [Noisy
typing] continuing with our behind the scenes theme of this 100th episode we
thought it might be nice to speak to the person who transcribes our podcast
every single week. Alison Kingsley is on the line. Hi Alison. What’s it like to
be on a programme that you’ve transcribed for so long?
ALISON- Yeah,
it’s kind of surreal. It’s been, well not only Access All has been two years,
but I’ve been doing your previous episodes of Ouch for many years. So, it’s
really lovely and quite an honour to be invited on. Thank you.
EMMA- When
you’ve been transcribing the podcast in the past was there anything that you’ve
been writing down and transcribing that you’ve been like, oh my gosh, what is
this?
ALISON- Absolutely
all the time! [Laughter] no, I’m joking. Not so much with your ones. I mean,
obviously I transcribe other things as well and yeah, you do sometimes have to
put up with some bad language and things like that; which obviously never
happens on a BBC podcast. No, I think we’ve had to a few ‘in brackets’ beeps
and things like that, but not so much. No, I chuckle a lot. I was very
disappointed actually because I have a lovely colleague, Jo, who covers for me
when I’m on holiday, and I last year you had an episode with somebody
who had hired a sex worker and I reading back on that and thinking,
that would have been a good one to have transcribed.
EMMA- Oh,
Melanie and Chayse, that’s who it was, yeah.
ALISON- That’s
right, yeah.
EMMA- Melanie
and Chayse were absolutely phenomenal actually.
ALISON- [Laughs]
EMMA- So,
can you tell me a little bit about the process of transcribing? Just to give
people a little bit of a flavour, we produce, we get it all together, then we
record, then we edit. And we have a fairly good-natured argument every single
time about how long each person’s section is going to be, because we all want
15 minutes when we can only have ten. And then we put it all together into a
nice little package and we it, and then we send the email to Alison,
usually quite late at night, saying here’s the audio to transcribe. Then what
happens?
ALISON- Okay,
so the good thing is I live in so I’m already an hour ahead of you, so
the fact it comes in late at night at least means I pick it up very early in
the morning and I can get it to you by your preferred time, which is 8 o’clock
UK time. So, basically it’s a question of ing it. Most people who
transcribe use a piece of software which enables you to stop and start, because
obviously nobody can type as quickly as people speak. So, I just it into
that piece of software and yeah, just type as I hear. I mean, a lot of the
times you have to stop and do some Google checking, because you can never
assume when you’re transcribe that names are written how you think they’re
written. For example, my name Alison, there’s a number of ways of spelling it,
double L, some people spell with a Y. And yeah, then when it’s done the other
last thing is to proof it, which is super important because when you’re typing
quickly, which obviously you need to be able to do, it’s very easy just to do
the odd spelling mistake. And I’m a bit of a grammar geek, so I always like to
make sure that everything’s punctuated correctly. And then it back to
you.
So,
the whole process, your episodes are usually about half an hour, it’s usually
about an hour and a half to type and then half an hour to proof.
EMMA- Brilliant.
So, when we get it in an email we then proof it again. Sorry, Alison, we do.
ALISON- No,
that’s absolutely fine [laughter].
EMMA- And
then we it to our podcast page where so many people say that they read
it, not just deaf people, but also people with auditory processing disorders,
autistic people. I have to ask you, because there are a lot of transcription
softwares out there now and stuff that you can just, like, pile the audio into
it and not that long later it spits out some text, are you worried that they’re
going to take your job?
ALISON- Maybe
in the future but, I mean, this has been happening for many, many years now. I
mean, I’ve been doing this job for 20 years and right at the beginning I
going along to a conference where they were talking about AI basically
that would be doing this, and so I thought it was round the corner. But
honestly, 20 years later I’ve yet to see one that can do it anywhere near as
well as a physical person. It’s a bit like my other job, which is teaching, I
always know when a student has done homework using Google Translate.
EMMA- [Laughs]
ALISON- It’s
as clear as day [laughs].
EMMA- Because
you teach English as a foreign language, don’t you?
ALISON- And
French as a foreign language, yes, both.
EMMA- Sometimes
in our podcast there are voices, happily, that are maybe a little bit different
to your average voice, a bit untypical. How do you deal with those?
ALISON- As
sympathetically as I possibly can because obviously you want to be able to get
that person’s style of communication across. What you can do with the software
is slow it down, and speed it up which is useful when you’re proofing. So, if I
am having trouble I can slow it down; so obviously play it 100%, I can slow it
down to 80% or 90%. Because what I’ve learnt, especially with your podcast, is
that you have such a diverse range of people with physical, mental health
difficulties, speech difficulties as well, and sometimes you’ve had people on
who have actually used a piece of software to speak, so it’s my job to make
sure that people who are reading it are getting the same experience as those
who are listening to it.
EMMA- Yeah,
we have lots of disabled people on our team who make our podcast. But actually
you’ve got a connection with disability as well, don’t you, Alison?
ALISON- Yeah.
It was strange actually because I think it probably was about the time I
started to do Ouch that we discovered that our two sons have a disability
that’s called Ataxia, which is, in a nutshell it’s a neuromuscular disease.
There are lots of different types, Friedrich’s is the most common. The one that
they’ve got appears in adolescence, so they were both about puberty when we
started to see signs of that. And so when you have parents coming on talking
about their children, you know, I know immediately how difficult that is when
you’re trying to deal…trying to make your family as normal as you possibly can
whilst also navigating schools and different institutions, trying to get the
help that you need. And it’s interesting for me to get a perspective on it
living in as well, because obviously I haven’t been through that in the
UK system.
EMMA- What
is the difference in do you think? I know you haven’t been through the
UK but you’re from the UK so I’m sure you’ve spoken to people.
ALISON- I
think I’m fairly familiar with it from listening to your podcasts [laughs].
EMMA- Yeah,
well there you go.
ALISON- I
think we probably have to jump through less hoops to get help here. What we’ve
found is we got a lot of help with school. When I talk to just family back home
it seems to be a lot longer process to get that help that you may need in
school. So, both of them had an assistant with them in class, not for lack of
comprehension or anything like that, it was just because their writing is so
bad because it does affect your mobility basically, so they don’t write very
well, neither of them. That was all put in place very, very quickly. One of
them now he’s studying down in Bordeaux and he has a studio apartment paid for,
he has his course paid for, and he gets some money towards his studies. So,
even though it’s not what you would ever choose for your children I must say
that they deal with it very well, and that makes us deal with it very well,
because we don’t have to jump through hoops to get the things that they need.
EMMA- What
have your favourite bits been?
ALISON- The
ones that I most are things when you have people on describing comic
events. And I do you had some people invited on to do some shows at
the Edinburgh Fringe, people were telling their comedy stories. I one
guy had Crohn’s disease and he was talking his story.
EMMA- Oh
I think he ended up having to – spoiler alert – I think he ended up having to
pooh in a bin.
ALISON- That’s
the one, yeah!
EMMA- That
was Storytelling Live at the Edinburgh Festival.
ALISON- [Laughs]
that one.
EMMA- That
was before Access All, that was back in the Ouch days, but I love that that’s
what made an impression on you. Alison Kingsley, on behalf of everybody who
reads your transcript every single week thank you so much.
ALISON- Thank
you. And thank you for letting do it, I thoroughly enjoy them. They’re by far
my favourite job.
EMMA- [Typing]
we’re at the final set of clips from our celebrity guests and friends of Access
All of the best pieces of advice another disabled person has given them. Let’s
hear them:
ADE- Hello
Access All. Ade Adepitan here. Best piece of advice given to me by a disabled
person came from a good old wheelchair basketball friend of mine many years
ago, and his name was Steve Caine. And he told me early on in my career to, “Stay
open minded and look to every aspect of your world in order to learn from
technology, from even the most unexpected place. Just because someone or
something doesn’t do things in the way that society expects them to do doesn’t
mean they can’t be brilliant, and it doesn’t mean we can’t learn from them”.
SAMANTHA- Slow
down, [laughs] slow down. That is one of the best pieces of advice. And being a
little kinder and gentler to myself. I feel like sometimes I needed to keep up
with my non-disabled peers in everything that I did, whether that’s putting my
make-up on as fast and getting ready for an interview. So, slowing down and
telling people that things might not be as quickly feasible, but that’s okay.
EMMA- Ade Adepitan and Samantha Renke. Well, that’s it. I hope you enjoyed this 100th episode
of Access All. Thanks to my guests, Rose Ayling-Ellis, our transcriber, Alison
Kingsley, and the lady from the sleeper trains talking toilet door. Thanks to
the people who make this show, past and present. Today in particular thanks to
the editors, Damon Rose and Alex Lewis; thanks to our producers, Drew, Niamh,
Dan, Alex and Beth. But most of all thanks to you for listening to Access All.
You are who make this podcast. You’re who we are all about. Please keep talking
to us, keep telling your story. You can find us on Instagram and Twitter
@AccessAll. You can email accessall@bbc.co.uk.
For this week thank you and goodbye.
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