In Touch Folgen

Three visually impaired people tell us about their experiences of domestic abuse. The cases involve the perpetrator using their visual impairments against them, though gaslighting, coercive control and in one case, extreme violence being the cause of their visual impairment. These stories come in the light of a report called The Unseen, by The Vision Foundation and Safe Lives. Olivia Curno, The Vision Foundation's Chief Executive gives summary of the report's harrowing findings.Link to The Unseen domestic abuse report: https://www.visionfoundation.org.uk/our-work/research/the-unseen/If you are at risk of domestic abuse, contact the National Domestic Abuse Helpline on 0808 2000 247. If you are in immediate danger, call 999 and ask for the police.Presenter: Peter White Producer: Beth Hemmings Production Coordinator: Liz Poole Website image description: Peter White sits smiling in the centre of the image. He is wearing a dark green jumper with the collar of a check shirt peeking at the top. Above Peter's head is the BBC logo, Across Peter's chest reads "In Touch" and beneath that is the Radio 4 logo. The background is a series of squares that are different shades of blue.

Our new Prime Minister, Liz Truss hasn't yet offered assurances to people receiving disability related benefits during the current rises in inflation and wider cost of living increases. This has concerned visually impaired grandmother and benefit receiver Kim Jaye. We invited her onto the program to explain her current situation and her added costs due to her visual impairment. The RNIB only last week handed in a petition to the Department for Work and Pensions about how the cost of living crisis is impacting visually impaired and blind people. Their Director of Insight and Customer Voice, David Aldwinckle explains the contents of the petition and their future plans to help blind and partially sighted people through the cost of living crisis. The British Wireless for the Blind Fund have announced that they are to be discontinuing their Sonata Internet Audio service by the end of October. Kim O'Neil uses the service and explains to us why the device offers such an important and unmatched service and the Fund's Jenny Cameron tells us the reason behind the discontinuation.Presenter: Peter White Producer: Beth Hemmings Production Coordinator: Liz Poole Website image description: Peter White sits smiling in the centre of the image. He is wearing a dark green jumper with the collar of a check shirt peeking at the top. Above Peter's head is the BBC logo, Across Peter's chest reads "In Touch" and beneath that is the Radio 4 logo. The background is a series of squares that are different shades of blue.

Dr Peter Hampson is the Clinical Director of the Association of Optometrists and we invited him onto the program after hearing about a rather unusual cornea replacement method to come out of Sweden; scientists there have developed replacement human corneas out of pig skins. We ask Dr Hampson whether this could become a viable solution to tackling the UK's cornea shortage.A Edinburgh based accessible technology company called Screen Language are soon to release a new streaming platform, strictly for audio described movies. It will launch on September 30th called My Sound Cinema. It aims to be a one stop shop for audio described films of a variety of genre. Elena Zini is Screen Language's founder and she gives us the details about their new platform. Kim Milward is visually impaired and a major film fan, we invited her to tell us and Elena whether My Sound Cinema is something that she would consider using.And we sent producer Beth Hemmings to Leeds to listen in on a music performance by a group of visually impaired people who had been working with percussionist Mendi Mohinder Singh. The music was performed on some rather unorthodox instruments...Presenter: Peter White Producer: Beth Hemmings Production Coordinator: Paul Holloway Website image description: Peter White sits smiling in the centre of the image. He is wearing a dark green jumper with the collar of a check shirt peeking at the top. Above Peter's head is the BBC logo, Across Peter's chest reads "In Touch" and beneath that is the Radio 4 logo. The background is a series of squares that are different shades of blue.