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In Touch: Blind magistrates; reading printed documents; listener feedback.

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29/04/2014

Blind magistrates; reading printed documents; listener feedback.

BBC Radio 4 - In Touch, Blind magistrates; reading printed documents; listener feedback.

Experiences of blind magistrates, and reading printed documents with a smartphone.

Presented by Peter White. Two visually impaired magistrates share their experiences. Also, developments in scanning and reading technology on smartphones.

In England up until 2001, blind people were not permitted to hold the office of magistrate. It is now estimated that there more than 60 performing this function. Ian Pearson is a blind court chairman, and Paul Millross has been serving on the bench for just on a year. They talk to Peter White about some of the problems that still exist within the judicial system for some blind magistrates.

Reading printed documents is still one of the barriers that technology hasn't quite managed to fully resolve for visually impaired people, but this week, we test drive two developments in this area. While scanning software on a Smartphone isn't all that new, it's now much cheaper and more freely available than in the past. Ian Macrae, Editor of the magazine Disability Now demonstrates one app he finds useful.

Presenter: Peter White 
Producer: Lee Kumutat 
Editor: Andrew Smith

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