Sometimes it's better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness

Last week the RNIB was looking for people with voting experiences to talk about them. Every UK election, they campaign for more accessible voting, and a report has just come out today detailing some of their findings after the December general election. I vaguely remember that survey they talk about there, so I was almost certainly one of the 480 blind and partially sighted people to answer it.

I did pre-recorded interviews for lcoal radio yesterday and local TV news today. The radio was a nice 5-10 minute phone call that happened exactly when I was told it would and was easy and pleasant to do. THe TV today...was a little different.

I got an e-mail from the RNIB person I'd been dealing with yesterday, saying it was planned for 2:30 and I'd no doubt get a phone call yesterday, or perhaps this morning, to arrange a meeting point and finalize details. I didn't hear from them until 2:40, at which point I'd almost hoped I wouldn't hear from them, not least because it was raining. They thought I lived too near the noisy main road, and I don't want strangers in my house anyway so the back garden wasn't happening (it's ugly af anyway), so we tried to find some place with any kind of shelter in the local parks because it was raining off and on. We eventually had to settle for a picnic table sorta under a tree and hope the rain didn't come back on (which it didn't until I was walking home about an hour later).

It was still windy and chilly though; I dressed like I would for going to work, expecting to be outside about as much as I am for my commute now, but I didn't think that walking normally keeps me warmer than sitting still was going to do (the only walking I had to do was at the end, fake walking to give the camera some "this is how a blind person walks" stuff where I repeated the same little bits a bunch of times).

I was a little worried that my story wouldn't be appealing enough for the narrative -- I'm one of the apparently-44% of partially-sighted people who is able to vote independently and secretly, and I can access campaign literature and polling cards and other eelction paraphrenalia in their ordinary forms. But my three UK voting experiences have all been unpleasantly stressful, and Andrew and I now consider it mandatory to schedule our day around having to go to vote together because I end up relying on him for a lot of access and accommodations that would be more properly supplied by polling station staff. Any disabled person will tell you this is not ideal (albeit, sadly, typical), but abled people don't always see the red flags in this kind of situation; they tend to understand "I needed this flashy thing, this gadget or whatever, and I didn't get it" kind of stories much better. "Disabled people need the culture to change" is just not a story a lot of people want to hear; much better for us to be assigned some magic app or something that makes it all okay without anyone else having to do any work eh?

But the radio interviewer said she has an invisible disability and she seemed to immediately understand all the wider points I was trying to make, which is one reason that was so effortless an experience. And today's abled interviewer and cameraman were actually encouragingly on board too; they clearly hadn't thought about the things I was saying before (one of them said as much) but the interviewer asked me really good questions that made me feel like I was being understood, and as the cameraman and I were walking along together for a few seconds at the end, he said "well, even having something like a braille template wouldn't do you any good because what you need is for people to talk to you!" Exactly, yes. I certainly hope that comes across in the finished product.

It was an exhausting day though; I didn't get much done this morning which could be because I might not have anyway -- I slept awfully -- but certainly wasn't helped by always half-expecting the phone to ring, and not being able to get too involved in anything. And afterwards I was really tired. I always remember that I enjoy these kinds of interviews, I never remember how exhausting they are, heh. Plus honestly it was tiring coming in from the cold; warming up again and finally being able to relax a bit meant I wasn't much use the rest of the afternoon.

This is for ITV Granada again, so fellow northwesterners might be able to see it live but like last time if I get a link I'll share it. They said it might be on next Wednesday but who knows.