Stephen Jolley

00:15

S1 (Speaker 1)

On Vision Australia Radio. This is Vision Extra with Peter Greco.

S2

Let's do a bit of armchair travel or perhaps travel vicariously through the words of radio veteran Stephen Jolly. Stephen, great to catch up.

S3

Good to be talking to you again, Peter.

S2

Stephen, you've been away and it sounds like you've had a pretty good time of it. Tell us a bit about where you've been and why you decided to go to the places you did go. Yes, it did.

S3

Work out very nicely. My wife and I, we like to travel occasionally and we hadn't been to the UK or really Europe at all. So we decided we would do this three years ago and something went wrong three years ago and we didn't get there, but we did have our long awaited trip in May. There were three of us, a friend of ours, a long time friend who was very helpful. She came along as well and we went to the UK for three weeks and then went across the channel to France for eight days, stayed in Paris, and we went out of Paris one morning. We talk about that in a moment because that was quite an adventure. About 50 K out of Paris.

S2

Now we're Paris, home of Louis Braille of France. Home of Louis Brown. Did you get to visit the Louis Braille Museum? We did.

S3

Yes. The museum is located in a little place called Coop Valley, which is about 50 K from Paris. And the museum is actually based at what was the original family home of the Braille family. Louis Braille, for those who aren't aware, is the man who devised the Braille system that so many of us love and use regularly. And he was born in 1809. So if you think of the home being just over 200 years old, we were very well hosted by the curator of that Louis Braille Museum. Stefan greeted us when we got there. We got there a little bit early because it was a bit hard to judge how long it's going to take to get there. We went by cab from Paris and he was very welcoming. We got two hours that we spent looking over the museum. The first one of the first things we did after we left a sensory garden, which was very pleasant, was to have a look at a tactile model of the Louis Braille family home. And that was good because it sort of gave you a bit of an idea of what we were going to be seeing inside. Put it into context more. 

Then we went in to the house and visited the various rooms. One of them was the family room where Stefan said, Well, let's sit down here now and have a talk. And that's where we had a conversation about the life of Louis Braille. We then moved across to another area, which is where the actual museum with lots of items is stored. And we saw some very early writing devices, tactile writing devices, Braille devices, the arithmetic. Taylor Slate, which you might remember from school and some people might remember the slate that we used for arithmetic and algebra with the little holes in it and what we referred to as the figures, the little pieces of Led that had a bar on hand and two dots on the other end. Each one could be put in its hole in eight different ways because it was excited, but because there were two ends to it, it was 16 different arrangements. And that's how some of us did our basic arithmetic and algebra back in school days. So it was good to see that again. 

I saw an abacus. And hello to anybody listening who still has an abacus. I'm embarrassed to say I don't have one, but they were a great little device. The abacus with the beads moving around on the sort of the felt platform. So we saw some other machines that we used in the early days to produce mainly Braille, but there was work done with trying to produce tactile versions of the characters so that they could be seen by sighted people. 

But that brings me to, I think, my greatest sort of revelation from the day was the simplicity of Braille. For years there were tactile systems being used which were very cumbersome, so there were lots of dots representing the printed characters. They were hard to produce and they were not easy to actually read because the characters were sort of crowded with all these dots and the shapes weren't all that easy for the fingertip to discern. Young Louis Braille, as in the early days of his adulthood or late adolescence, hit upon the idea of the six dots and the pattern of these six dots, the two columns and three rows. And that platform or matrix could be arranged in 64 different ways to produce the various Braille characters. So he moved away from trying to represent a printed character and said, Let's use something that works better for somebody who's using their fingers to read it. 

It's a bit of a long explanation there. Sorry about that. But it was a very important sort of awareness that came to me that that was the key breakthrough that he made, and he probably wouldn't have had his system if others hadn't been doing stuff with tactile arrangements in the past. And Captain Charles Barbier, who was in the French military, was credited with developing a number of systems, including a system for blind people. And that was really one of the the pillars in which Louis Braille developed his Braille system.

06:26

S2

Stephen, you mentioned there were three that met with Stephane. Was it just you three? Are they sort of organised tours that the museum runs?

S3

Yes, they're very good. Personalised tours. As a matter of fact, they say we can accommodate parties of up to three. So that means you get very good attention to your questions and can put your hands on the stuff quite easily. No, don't touch signs or anything like that is very good.

S2

Yeah. Not when it comes to Braille. What about sort of modern Braille stuff? Is that in the museum as well? Because as you said, very simple. And you know, nearly or 200 years ago since it was invented, What about the sort of modern Braille exhibit today? Are they part of it as well?

S3

We got to the Staines machine. We got to a Perkins Brailler. Okay. I didn't see much about computerised Braille. Didn't see anything about computerised Braille, though. I think we did talk about it at one stage. But it was really a history of the machines that were used for such a long time. Of course, the simple Braille frame or slate was there as well.

S2

Stephen, you also spent some time in London or in England. Tell us a bit about that.

S3

Yeah, that was fun. We were three weeks in the UK when we arrived on the Wednesday the 3rd of May. We had planned to stay in London for a week, but...

S2

Birthday, I think.

S3

Isn't it two days after? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. My birthday, the 1st of May. So it was a bit of a birthday celebration, something different. But we didn't hang around London as we had originally planned because it was a big activity on the Saturday. The coronation, which made this change our schedule a little bit because it was going to be a bit expensive and very crowded and all that sort of thing. But the coronation was sort of everywhere. We've got the chance here. As much as you wanted to on the radio, we went to Cambridge for a couple of days. We then went to York, then up to Edinburgh for three days. Then we went to Bolton, Manchester for a couple of days. We saw the the guide dog centre in Bolton, which was very good and it was very interesting to meet with the people there that work with the dogs. And my wife Vicki was very interested in that because she has a seeing eye dog. And then we went to Cheltenham for a couple of days, then to bath for a couple of days and then stayed around London for a week or so. 

Then we caught the Eurostar train across the channel. There were some interesting highlights in in London - we visited a number of iconic places that you'd be expected to go to museums. Et cetera. And one of the things that impressed me was the effort that's gone to those places to make them inclusive. We were able to use audio guides some of the time, which are actually designed for the public. Though in a couple of places there were special versions of the audio guides that gave more explanation for blind people to enable us to be orientated. I noticed that in the the tour of the of the Windsor Castle and also the the war rooms of Churchill. And that was a very interesting visit, all that sacred underground stuff that went on. And often of course the audio guides would be apps which were problematic for accessibility on your smartphone. Then sometimes they were devices, but they were just touch screens. But then others that were really done properly had buttons, you know, old fashioned buttons that you press on the device. So. That really did give you the freedom to take it in really, really well. So that was good. 

Another thing I noticed in London, which was in the UK as we moved around, was the audible traffic signals that were very consistent. The same sound nice and loud and you could rely on them, not like some of the ones in Australia where the volumes go up and down. These were very consistent wherever we went. The train service, the railway service was quite a revelation. Very good audible announcements. No worries. Knowing where you were going, what stop you were getting, you'd come to it, etcetera. It's quite a complex system, particularly in London and very interesting.

10:52

S2

Stephen, did you book ahead and also, did you kind of go out of your way to make sure that either the people that you were going to see kind of knew the fact that you were coming along as in a person with a vision impairment and... or did you look for that sort of thing when you were booking or when you were doing your research?

S3

Most of our tours we booked in advance because you had to do that, and that's what I did for the Lords visit, which was a highlight. What I also tended to do when you meet up with a group with a guide, is when you're introducing yourself, just indicate that I'm blind. So I'm looking forward to your description. And the tour guides responded to that very well. And instead of saying over there, they'd say, I was left and things like that. They were actually very good at it. So, well, it's a bit like going to the MCG and doing a tour of the MCG, except it's different or the Adelaide Oval and I have actually done a tour of the Adelaide Oval. Peter, a few years ago, very treasured memory of that. It's really got to touch the surface of the ground. Yes.

They're very strict with that for people that mightn't be aware, there's a metre and a half around the edge of the ground that they are very, very protective of. So you, yes, if you're lucky enough, you can get to touch the surface. The grass didn't get shot or anything. It was quite good at Lord's. I guess the highlight was being in the museum and standing alongside the cabinet that contains the ashes and putting my hand on the cabinet and the glass as close as you can get to it. 

So that was good fun, you know, very silly really, to make such a thing of it. But it was a bit special because it's part of so many, so many of us. It's part of our lives, the Ashes battles. But it was just other interesting things about the Lord's tour. It was good to sort of get a feel for the size of the the ground when you walked around outside in the street. And also we got to sit in the stand, visited the long room and the rooms of the players, which were nicely carpeted, which surprised me because I don't think all the big venues in Australia have their change rooms carpeted. So yeah, that was, that was quite interesting.

S2

Stephen, we'll have to leave it there. The old clock on the wall has beaten us, but thanks for that little snapshot. Thanks for your slide night and I'm sure it won't be too long before we speak again. 

S3 

I hope I didn't bore everyone too much, Peter, bbut very interesting to chat with you and all the best to everyone listening.

13:37

S2

I think you've made us jealous. Steven Jonlley telling us a little bit of a snapshot of his trip to Europe and the UK. That is it for the program. If you've missed some of it, if you'd like to hear it again, you can search for an extra on the iTunes store on Spotify or your favorite podcast service.