And yet another workshop

Yes, yes, last week I did another mostly exciting workshop with people who are visually impaired (again at Time & Talents). Most of the participants were again from South London and a few of the participants used to work in a factory for blind people, which was charity based, as far as I understood. 

I was a bit nervous before this meeting. First, I did not know if people there lost their sight with  the age or if there were born blind. And second, I was afraid to say something silly concerning visual media, like to start asking about photography (which actually did happen to me in the very end. I asked a gentleman if he liked taking pictures with his mobile phone...umpf).

But people turned out to be incredibly lovely. They made me feel at ease and I had a wonderful time with them. It's such a rewarding work! You just feel so pleased when your interviewee enjoys your company and is happy to talk to you.

During this session I spent more time on individual talks rather than trying to discuss something with a whole group, which was eventually a good decision, I think. It also enabled me to listen to people for a longer period of time and gave their stories space to evolve.

What was interesting, is that the strategy of bringing an object worked much better in this workshop than in the first one, for obvious reasons. People were so excited to touch a telephone and were much more open to play around with it than the first group. It also brought up more comments related to telecommunication.

As for the core of my research, I found out that, naturally, audio-media like radio is much more relevant for this group. Or that there is such thing as a "book-machine" (which is just a DVD-player with a bigger storage capacity). One gentleman is supported by a computer in various manners: he makes notes about every single detail concerning the household, because of a bad short memory. And you may ask how he saves and retrieves this information. The answer is simple: through voice.

I wanted to publish this almost a week ago, but there is so much happening around my project at the moment that I am behind with its documentation. The next post will probably be on our degree show, it is already in one week and a bit. Lots and lots of work ahead! Eek!