January 6, 2026 • 28 mins
It's a World Braille Day special episode of Talking Vision as we feature Vision Australia Radio and RPH network veteran Stephen Jolley, who catches up with BBC North America correspondent Gary O'Donoghue.
Gary has been totally blind from a young age, and so throughout his later childhood and adult life braille has played a central role in everything he does.
Tune in to hear more from Gary about braille's role in his life, making inroads as a blind journalist on the world stage, breaking down barriers and covering the latest global news from North America over the past decade for the BBC.
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Episode Transcript
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S1 (00:21):
From Vision Australia. This is talking vision. And now here's
your host, Sam Colley.
S2 (00:31):
Hello, everyone. It's great to be here with you. And
for the next half hour, we talk matters of blindness
and low vision. Welcome to this special World Broadway episode
of Talking Vision. World Broadway was on Sunday, the 4th
of January this year, celebrating the role that Braille has
(00:52):
played for the last 201 years in the lives of
people who are blind or have very low vision. This
week it's my great pleasure to introduce a favorite of
ours on Vision Australia Radio, Stephen Jolly, as he catches
up with BBC North America correspondent. Gary O'Donoghue, a journalist
(01:17):
who is totally blind from a very young age but
has not let that stop him from achieving the absolute
highest pinnacles of international journalism. So without further ado, here's
Stephen with Gary right now.
S3 (01:38):
So you went to Worcester College, um, a well known, um,
school for blind boys in those days. Um, and then
you went on to university? Um, it was residential at
the at the college. You went to university? How was
that changed for you into a much larger and gender
(01:59):
mixed environment?
S4 (02:01):
It was a huge shock, actually. I mean, the one
thing about, I mean, I, you know, come from a
sort of working class background. My father was a cab driver.
My mother worked in bars and various things. Um, and
so when I was sent away to school, um, first
of all, to Dorton House and then to Worcester when
I was 11, um, it was a sort of classical English, um,
(02:26):
public school environment, really. I mean, it was it was
for blind boys in those days. Um, but it had
all the sort of hallmarks and the traditions and the
ways of doing things that were common to English public
schools in those days. And, and, you know, we have
this confusing, um, confusing kind of nomenclature in England about
(02:47):
public actually meaning private when it comes to schools. Um,
and so it was a completely different world that I
wasn't used to. Um, I was away from home, which
I'd never been before. Um, you know, sharing dormitories with,
with people you didn't know and, uh, very sort of
academic environment and, and it, um, you know, it had
(03:08):
a lot of downsides, to be honest. And it had
some upsides, which were that it was a sort of
Rolls-Royce education they did instill or, you know, a huge
level of self-confidence and huge level of belief that anything
was possible. And they had huge success. You know, 90
odd percent of people from Worcester went on to higher
(03:31):
education to university.
S3 (03:33):
So tell us about that experience at university.
S4 (03:36):
Well, it was a huge shock when I got to
university because I suddenly realised that people, even, you know,
clever people, could behave very oddly towards you if you
were blind. And that, that I found quite, quite difficult
at first, you know, that they, they were awkward and, um,
nervous and I mean, of course, they're 18 years old
as well, and being away from home for the first time. So,
(03:58):
you know, which doesn't occur to you at the time.
But I settled in really after a couple of terms and,
and my university were they were they were so good
to me. Um, I remember it was in a very
low key way, but I remember early on, um, someone
noticing in my room that my Braille books were all
sort of piled up on the floor, um, because obviously
(04:21):
the bookshelves were for normal books, and someone must have
mentioned this somewhere. And suddenly, you know, a couple of
days came by and then the, um, the college carpenter
turned up and built me a whole set of bookshelves
that would fit Braille books just in my room. Yeah. Um,
and it kind of. I don't even know how that
really happened, but it sort of just happened. And they
(04:43):
would do things like make sure, um, you know, I
had reading lists well, in advance. They would make sure that,
you know, the librarians if there was a book I
needed and they didn't have in the library, they'd go
and get it from the bookshop for me and just.
S3 (04:56):
Tell us the college and the university that you were at.
S4 (04:59):
Yeah. This was this was Christ Church in Oxford, which is, um,
the biggest college in Oxford. And it's a beautiful sort of, um,
16th century college. It's it's where some of some of
you are familiar with the Harry Potter films. Um, the
great Hall in Christchurch is often used, um, in the
(05:19):
Harry Potter films for, for, I think their dining hall.
It's a very, very grand and imposing place. Very exciting
to eat your dinner there every night. And it's got
Oxford's Cathedral within its precincts. The college chapel is effectively
the Oxford Cathedral as well. Um, and. Yeah, and I
spent three, three years there and a year abroad in Paris, um,
(05:45):
when I was meant to be studying, um, at the Sorbonne. But, um,
I spent most of the time actually doing little radio
packages for the In Touch programme in the UK, which
is the BBC's uh, programme for visually impaired people.
S3 (05:58):
Still going strong with with Peter.
S4 (06:00):
Still going strong after all these years? Yeah. Um, and
still with, with Peter White, um, who is a great
been a great mentor and a great supporter over the years.
You know, he we stand on from my point of view,
I stand on his shoulders in so many ways. Um,
over the years and, um, yeah. And that's where I
(06:21):
got the bug for broadcasting really at that point in time.
S3 (06:25):
Yes. Well, you talk about Peter White as a mentor
to you, a blind broadcaster, and I'm sure you're influencing
lots of other people now. Um, tell us how you
got into journalism and about the barriers that there might
have been and why you wanted to do it.
S4 (06:43):
Well, my first real break was, um, complete accident. Of course,
these things often are. Is that my dad, who I
think I mentioned was a cab driver. He picked up
a blind chap called Kevin Mulhern, who was a blind producer, um,
of television programmes back in the 80s. And he got
talking to him about me. I was at university and Kevin,
(07:04):
bless him, said, why doesn't he come in and have
a long come along and have a look at my
television production company, and we're putting a programme together and
come and have a look. And I came and had
a look and and he introduced me to some people
at the BBC. And then during some of the summer
vacations at Oxford, I got some sort of, you know,
unpaid researcher work on various programmes on radio four in
(07:26):
the UK. And that's really how it started. I hadn't
no real interest, you know, when I went to university
in being a journalist, although I'd been editor of the
school newspaper, um, at Worcester for a period of time. Um,
and then it was the sort of it was the
radio side of it that really grasped me. And I, um,
got to the end of my career at university, and
(07:48):
I applied for some of the BBC's prestigious, you know,
training schemes. They have a thing. They have a certainly
then a thing called the News Trainee Scheme. And I
applied and I didn't get it, and I applied a
second time and I didn't get it, although they did
ask me in and had a chat. And, you know,
there were some pretty senior people, one of whom said,
you know, I don't think a blind person can be
a reporter. And of course, in those days you could
(08:11):
say that perfectly. You know, legitimately you could in those days,
of course, uh, reject people for jobs on those grounds openly. Um,
there were no anti-discrimination laws at that point in time,
but there were enough people around, Stephen, fortunately, who were
prepared to take a punt on me, not least Thena Heschel,
(08:33):
the great producer of the In Touch program for so
many years who has given me stuff, but also in
the areas where I was more, I felt more, I
felt more interested, which was politics in particular. Um, so
people on, you know, programs like today in Parliament in
the UK, um, and and that gave me a, gave
me a break. And one particular or a couple of
(08:53):
particular people in the politics department there, uh, a man
called Bob Eggington, another one called Richard Eyre, who ran
the politics department at the time, just, you know, this untested,
untried 22 year old, They gave me a chance. You know,
they gave me a chance, you know, short little contract.
And it was around the time of the 92 election.
(09:14):
And I did a bit of that for local radio
at Westminster. The service that delivers for local radio. And,
and I absolutely loved it. And, um, and I didn't
mess up as far as I could tell. And, uh,
the contracts got longer and longer until I, you know,
got a job about a year later. Permanent job.
S3 (09:30):
Gary, has technology helped that? Because in your early days,
you really had to to struggle to find out what
was in the newspapers. You'd have to have friends in
the very early days to to read it to you.
Content has now become so, uh, easily available, so accessible.
The challenge is to decide what to read rather than
(09:52):
to find something to read.
S4 (09:54):
It's absolutely right. I mean, I used to have to
get people round on a Sunday to read the Sunday
papers to me. I used to have to get people
to read sort of cuttings from the research library, where
they would photocopy cuttings if you were researching a story. Um,
I remember, you know, I had a girlfriend who, you know,
made her read cuttings at night and I'm sure she
sort of thought that was probably not what, what you
(10:16):
were meant to do of an evening. But, um, um,
things have got a lot easier, uh, with technology. But
at the same time, the numbers of sources of information,
you know, the amount of stuff has just multiplied beyond
absolute recognition. Now, back in those days, if you kept
yourself across 3 or 4 newspapers, you were okay. Yeah.
(10:38):
I mean, it's just not like that anymore, isn't it?
So our problem now is, I think, to sort of
how do we most efficiently use the tools we have,
like on the iPhone, on the PC or the Mac?
How do we most efficiently use those to get to
what we need quickly, uh, and to sift through the noise?
So I, for example, I tend to farm out things
(11:00):
like the sort of trawling of things like X to
my producer and I say, yeah, just keep an eye
on it for me, because by definition it's linear. So
you kind of have to read everything to, to get
an idea. Whereas, you know, if you can see and
my producer is cited, she can scan it for me,
you know, just keep an eye on, you know, anything
(11:22):
that's relevant to what we're doing. Same with some of
the other social media channels. You know, we have these
sort of teams. We use Microsoft Teams a lot and
we use WhatsApp groups a lot as well. And sometimes
the sheer volume of messages is just too much. And
and again, we can only read them in a linear fashion. Um,
(11:43):
and it can just take ages to learn nothing or,
you know, to, to have not help in any way.
So I try to be quite ruthless about what I
do read, what I do focus on.
S3 (11:57):
I was having a conversation recently with, uh, my brother, actually,
and he said to me, Stephen, you might think your
productivity is going to go up with AI and associated technologies,
and it will. But for people who can see, it'll
probably go up even more. And so there's sort of
a bigger gap. The bar is higher. I thought that
(12:20):
was pretty insightful.
S4 (12:22):
Yeah, I think so. I mean, this digital divide that
people talk about. Um, it hasn't it certainly hasn't gone away. Um,
and often we find, don't we, we take a, you know,
two steps forward and one step back. And then, but
also suddenly, just suddenly, things can break as we know, um,
you know, someone rolls out a new version of this
(12:43):
or that, and suddenly something's broken, and, and you're kind
of floundering around. And also, I think, um, it's very
difficult to explain to one's employers or people, the people
you work with, the sort of usability issue. They just
they'll just say, is it accessible? And of course, it's
very often very difficult to answer that question in a
straightforward way because, well, yeah, I mean, it kind of talks, but,
(13:07):
you know, can I use it in a useful way quickly? Mhm. Um,
and by the time you started to say that they've
lost interest, um, so it's, you know, I mean I'm
constantly frustrated in my environment with things being rolled out
and you, you say has it been tested. Is there
any is there a sort of a tutorial for someone
(13:27):
who can't see the screen? And they say, well, not really,
you know, and, and I say, well, okay, well why
don't you unplug the mouse, turn the screen off and
see how you get on with it?
S3 (13:38):
It's more than voiceover speaking when you open the app.
S4 (13:42):
Yes that's right. That's absolutely right. It's there's so much
more to it than that. But that's quite a hard
thing to communicate at times.
S2 (13:55):
I'm Sam Colley and you're listening to Talking Vision on
Vision Australia Radio. Associated stations of the Radio Reading Network
and the Community Radio Network. I hope you enjoyed the
first half of Stephen Jolly there with Gary O'Donohue. If
you missed any part of the interview with Stephen or Gary,
(14:17):
or you'd love to hear it again, you can either
find it through Talking Vision on the podcast app of
your choice, through the Vision Australia Library, or through the
Interview Highlights feed, where you can find an extended version
of the conversation with Stephen and Gary. However, in the meantime,
(14:39):
let's get back to Stephen. Right now.
S3 (14:42):
I'm speaking with Gary O'Donoghue. He's the BBC's chief North
America correspondent. You might have heard him on BBC World
Television or BBC World Service Radio. I hope you have
because he does a great job. He's blind and he's
telling us about his work. Tell us about the place
of Braille in your life.
S4 (15:00):
Uh, Braille is absolutely essential. I was taught braille as
soon as I lost my sight. In fact, you know,
like a number of days after I emerged from hospital
at eight years old, the partially sighted school I was at,
you know, took me out of my classes, sat me
on a bench outside, and a Braille teacher turned up
and started teaching me braille. And, um, that carried on
through the blind schools. I went to, you know, in
(15:23):
at Worcester. We had a whole year at the beginning
dedicated to getting people up to a braille, you know,
a good Braille reading standard. Um, you know, the first
year was that was what it was all about. Um,
and I use it all the time. I use it
in my work all the time for reading scripts. Um,
I use it electronically also, when I'm on the road
(15:46):
for reading scripts and taking notes and taking notes in
press conferences or, um, writing out a piece for BBC
online or something like that. So it is, it is
central I use I read a little bit with Braille
for pleasure. I do use audiobooks, probably more, but with
the advent of things like the the Kindle app and
also the Apple books, you know, sometimes I increasingly nowadays
(16:10):
kind of do a mixture of reading, particularly with non-fiction,
where I'll read a couple of pages with the speech,
and then I might read a page or two with
the Braille display. And I find that kind of really
aids my concentration. And it, you know, it keeps up my,
my braille reading as well. Make sure I'm doing plenty
more of that. Um, and, and it's just a if
(16:31):
I find it a very enjoyable way of consuming a book. Actually.
S3 (16:35):
It's challenging when to step in and buy a new device,
isn't it, because it's changing all the time?
S4 (16:40):
Yes it is. Um, but but in many ways. Right.
You know, not some things haven't changed, which is, you know,
40 cells of, of electronic Braille. You know, we had
that 30 years ago and we still have that now,
don't we? And now there's all sorts of things that
are changing with multiline braille displays, and we'll see, um,
(17:02):
how they I mean, that would be a joy for
me in a studio environment presenting. I do some presentation
of live programs now on the World Service, like NewsHour
and the weekend. Um, and, you know, I'm still working
off paper with that scripts being printed run into the studio,
handed to me three seconds before I read them and stuff, because.
S3 (17:18):
You've got all the lines under your under your fingers.
You're not. Absolutely. Yeah.
S4 (17:23):
You're not scrabbling around and you're not reliant on, you know, devices.
But if they could produce a multiline display that would
allow me to just use the computer and have a
sort of because you get a sense of how much
there is to read and where the audio comes in,
for example, when you've got it physically in front of
you that you don't get when you only see a
line at a time on a Braille display. So a
(17:43):
multiline thing would be. The thing I've noticed, though, is
that when they refresh these multiline things there, it's too
noisy for a studio environment. You can't can't have that
noise going on in a studio. Um, it'll be too distracting.
So hopefully at some point there'll be a technology that
refreshes gives me ten lines of Braille. Refreshing silently. I'd
definitely go for that.
S3 (18:03):
I want to take you back though, to another application
of noisy, very busy environments. Give us with your time
in America three. Let's call them high adrenaline moments.
S4 (18:17):
Three high adrenaline moments. Uh, well, I suppose, um, we
don't just, for example, we don't just do politics in America.
So I remember things like, you know, being sent on, um, uh,
you know, sent out for on various mass shootings at
times and, you know, and times when we were sent to,
(18:38):
to cover these mass shootings, which are all too regular
in America, as you know. You know, when the the
gunmen are still on the loose and you're hanging around
a place that he's, you know, where he shot people
up and, uh, not knowing what's going to happen. And
we certainly had that in a couple of the deployments.
I went to, uh, also going to hurricanes. I know
I've stood in hurricanes. I stood in a category five
(19:00):
hurricane in, um, in Florida, Hurricane Michael, um, which absolutely
devastated the panhandle of Florida. Um, and that was pretty, uh,
pretty high intensity. But I suppose the in terms of
the most pressurized, one of the most pressurized moments has
got to be when, uh, I was there when, um,
(19:21):
a man, um, Thomas Crookes attempted to assassinate, uh, President Trump, um,
just before the 2024 election.
S3 (19:30):
Absolutely sensational radio that you were at at the rally
and then outside.
S4 (19:35):
Well, it was the it was quite a moment. And,
you know, it's one of those things where you kind
of it was a it was an early summer's evening. Uh,
we were just, you know, doing some gentle lives. I thought,
this is just on our way, actually, to the Republican
National Convention in Milwaukee. We thought, okay, here's a he's
doing a rally in in Pennsylvania. We can drive there
(19:56):
and then fly from Pittsburgh and get to the RNC
the next day, do a few lives. He may or
may not announce his vice president tonight. Who knows? And
then suddenly the whole world kind of comes apart when
you hear these shots. And and I knew straight away
it was shooting. You know, the one thing about the
sad thing about living in America for so long is
that you you do know what shots sound like. Um, and, uh,
(20:20):
and then the next few hours was absolute. I mean,
that's I've never felt been under such pressure as a broadcaster,
as a professional, uh, as those few hours. And we
were fortunate enough to, just because of where we were placed,
that we weren't really under any restrictions. Um, because a
lot of journalists who were there were sort of penned
(20:41):
into a pen and we weren't, um, for various reasons.
And it meant we could talk to everyone who'd been there.
And we we, um, we found this guy who'd actually
seen the shooter and tried to warn the Secret Service
before he took his shots at Donald Trump.
S3 (20:59):
He saw him on a roof, didn't he?
S4 (21:01):
He did. He saw him climb onto the roof. He
saw him and he pointed him out. And the Secret Service,
you know, he was trying to get their attention, trying
to get them to take it seriously. And then he was, uh,
he was it was a very interesting moment, Steven, from
a visually impaired point of view, because, you know, only
afterwards did someone say to me, do you know what
(21:21):
that guy looked like? And I said, no, I don't
know what he said. Well, he's got this kind of
weird fake orange hair. He's like, um, uh, got a
can of beer in his hand, etc. and I was thinking,
if I could see, I wonder if I'd have put
him on air. Yeah. You know, I wonder if I'd
have been a bit worried about what he was going
to say, because it was a really explosive situation. People
(21:43):
were were very angry, very upset. It was a, you know,
one guy walked past me when I was on air
and said, they shot first. This is war, right? So,
you know the atmosphere was was absolutely fever pitch. And
if I put someone in there and he kind of
spouted a load of nonsense, that could have made things
a lot worse. But I just listened to him. Obviously
(22:06):
I didn't know what he looked like, but I listened
to him and he kept saying to me, this was
off air beforehand. He was consistent, and I kept asking
him to repeat himself, and he was consistent with what
he was saying. I think, okay, this guy, you know,
does know what he's seen, you know? And so I
put him on air and he told this story. And
what he said has completely stood the test of time.
He was, you know, genuinely the first eyewitness to what
(22:29):
had happened. Um, and that clip, um, ended up getting
sort of, you know, sent around. I mean, I think
the last time we looked that clip of him had
been viewed like in terms of social media 300 million times.
And you realize with that kind of thing, you realize
(22:50):
that you kind of you're reaching Like the whole globe.
S3 (22:55):
Now, you and your team have been recognized for that
piece of broadcasting, haven't you?
S4 (23:01):
We were. We have. We were fortunate enough to to
win a Royal Television Society award earlier this year for,
for breaking news in London. And so we went into
a went to a fancy hotel in Park Lane and um,
had a few sherbets and um, and got an award
and uh, and I, I hadn't really thought about what
(23:24):
I was going to say if we won, but I did,
I did, I decided that as I was walking up
to the stage, I am going to make a point here.
And I did make a point there about, you know,
the blind people and, and how, you know, there are
barriers and there are still barriers for, for blind journalists
and how, you know, I hoped that this would, you know,
(23:45):
put some of that doubt to bed, you know, about
blind people working in television and, and it got a very,
very good, very positive response, not just from the room,
which was very warming. You know, this is all your peers, um,
but also in the sort of online as well. It
got it got very well received. So we're very, very lucky.
We also got nominated for an Emmy, which we didn't win.
(24:05):
But I'll take an Emmy nomination any day, which is
very nice. Yeah. Pretty good.
S3 (24:10):
So tell me, when you're doing a project like that,
an assignment like that. Um, who do you have with you? You're.
I'm sure you're they're your best friends, um, in that
particular situation. But your friends and colleagues working with you,
how does that work? How many of you are there
and what happens?
S4 (24:26):
We tend to work in teams of three. So what
we tend to have is a cameraman who's also what
we call nowadays a shoot edit. So they can also
edit video. Uh, there's a correspondent and a producer. Um,
and that's true for, you know, me. And it's also
true for my sighted colleagues, that team that tends to
be the basic team. Um, and you might be doing
(24:49):
a mixture of lives, what we call lives, In other words,
you know, stand up in front of a camera, talk
live to the presenter in the studio in London. You
might be you're doing a lot of what they call
digital stuff now. So live these live pages on the
website that are kind of, you know, have sort of
bite size 100 word contributions on rolling stories. Those are
(25:10):
a huge priority for us. Now you're sort of witnessing stuff,
writing stuff up, doing little bits of analysis. You might
be filing radio voice pieces, which are like the 42nd
bits that go in the news bulletins. Um, you might
be doing radio packages, you might be doing television packages. Um,
you might be doing, you know, sit down interviews. But yeah,
(25:31):
it's three of you and a car is what you need.
S3 (25:35):
So when you were in, I think it was New
York when, um, Joe Biden was confirmed as winning the
2020 election, it was a Saturday night high excitement. Uh,
and BBC World Television were crossing. World news television were
crossing to you. You would have had a producer helping
you source the content that you needed to explain, etc..
S4 (25:59):
I think 2020 I was actually at the white House. Um,
I was in New York for 2016 at Hillary Clinton's
party when, um, she lost. And that was an extraordinary
experience because this sort of party suddenly evaporated and all
these people dancing were then crying. Um, but in 2020,
I was yeah, I would have had, um, a producer.
(26:20):
We probably in those circumstances, when you have a sort
of big story, you sometimes have engineers around as well,
and there might be more than one team. So there
could be two teams of 3 in 1 location. One
could be doing, um, lives, and another one could be gathering, uh,
to cut a package immediately. So, um, so there can
(26:41):
be a mixture of things. But yeah, the basic unit
is a is a team of of three.
S2 (26:51):
And that's all the time we have for today. You've
been listening to Talking Vision. Talking vision is a Vision
Australia radio production. Thanks to all involved with putting the
show together every week. And remember, we love hearing from you.
So please get in touch anytime on our email at
Talking Vision at. That's talking vision all. One word at
(27:16):
Vision Australia. But until next week it's Sam Coley saying
bye for now.
S1 (27:27):
You can contact Vision Australia by phoning us anytime during
business hours on one 384 7406. That's one 384 74
six or by visiting Vision Australia, that's Vision Australia.
From Vision Australia. This is talking vision. And now here's
your host, Sam Colley.
S2 (00:31):
Hello, everyone. It's great to be here with you. And
for the next half hour, we talk matters of blindness
and low vision. Welcome to this special World Broadway episode
of Talking Vision. World Broadway was on Sunday, the 4th
of January this year, celebrating the role that Braille has
(00:52):
played for the last 201 years in the lives of
people who are blind or have very low vision. This
week it's my great pleasure to introduce a favorite of
ours on Vision Australia Radio, Stephen Jolly, as he catches
up with BBC North America correspondent. Gary O'Donoghue, a journalist
(01:17):
who is totally blind from a very young age but
has not let that stop him from achieving the absolute
highest pinnacles of international journalism. So without further ado, here's
Stephen with Gary right now.
S3 (01:38):
So you went to Worcester College, um, a well known, um,
school for blind boys in those days. Um, and then
you went on to university? Um, it was residential at
the at the college. You went to university? How was
that changed for you into a much larger and gender
(01:59):
mixed environment?
S4 (02:01):
It was a huge shock, actually. I mean, the one
thing about, I mean, I, you know, come from a
sort of working class background. My father was a cab driver.
My mother worked in bars and various things. Um, and
so when I was sent away to school, um, first
of all, to Dorton House and then to Worcester when
I was 11, um, it was a sort of classical English, um,
(02:26):
public school environment, really. I mean, it was it was
for blind boys in those days. Um, but it had
all the sort of hallmarks and the traditions and the
ways of doing things that were common to English public
schools in those days. And, and, you know, we have
this confusing, um, confusing kind of nomenclature in England about
(02:47):
public actually meaning private when it comes to schools. Um,
and so it was a completely different world that I
wasn't used to. Um, I was away from home, which
I'd never been before. Um, you know, sharing dormitories with,
with people you didn't know and, uh, very sort of
academic environment and, and it, um, you know, it had
(03:08):
a lot of downsides, to be honest. And it had
some upsides, which were that it was a sort of
Rolls-Royce education they did instill or, you know, a huge
level of self-confidence and huge level of belief that anything
was possible. And they had huge success. You know, 90
odd percent of people from Worcester went on to higher
(03:31):
education to university.
S3 (03:33):
So tell us about that experience at university.
S4 (03:36):
Well, it was a huge shock when I got to
university because I suddenly realised that people, even, you know,
clever people, could behave very oddly towards you if you
were blind. And that, that I found quite, quite difficult
at first, you know, that they, they were awkward and, um,
nervous and I mean, of course, they're 18 years old
as well, and being away from home for the first time. So,
(03:58):
you know, which doesn't occur to you at the time.
But I settled in really after a couple of terms and,
and my university were they were they were so good
to me. Um, I remember it was in a very
low key way, but I remember early on, um, someone
noticing in my room that my Braille books were all
sort of piled up on the floor, um, because obviously
(04:21):
the bookshelves were for normal books, and someone must have
mentioned this somewhere. And suddenly, you know, a couple of
days came by and then the, um, the college carpenter
turned up and built me a whole set of bookshelves
that would fit Braille books just in my room. Yeah. Um,
and it kind of. I don't even know how that
really happened, but it sort of just happened. And they
(04:43):
would do things like make sure, um, you know, I
had reading lists well, in advance. They would make sure that,
you know, the librarians if there was a book I
needed and they didn't have in the library, they'd go
and get it from the bookshop for me and just.
S3 (04:56):
Tell us the college and the university that you were at.
S4 (04:59):
Yeah. This was this was Christ Church in Oxford, which is, um,
the biggest college in Oxford. And it's a beautiful sort of, um,
16th century college. It's it's where some of some of
you are familiar with the Harry Potter films. Um, the
great Hall in Christchurch is often used, um, in the
(05:19):
Harry Potter films for, for, I think their dining hall.
It's a very, very grand and imposing place. Very exciting
to eat your dinner there every night. And it's got
Oxford's Cathedral within its precincts. The college chapel is effectively
the Oxford Cathedral as well. Um, and. Yeah, and I
spent three, three years there and a year abroad in Paris, um,
(05:45):
when I was meant to be studying, um, at the Sorbonne. But, um,
I spent most of the time actually doing little radio
packages for the In Touch programme in the UK, which
is the BBC's uh, programme for visually impaired people.
S3 (05:58):
Still going strong with with Peter.
S4 (06:00):
Still going strong after all these years? Yeah. Um, and
still with, with Peter White, um, who is a great
been a great mentor and a great supporter over the years.
You know, he we stand on from my point of view,
I stand on his shoulders in so many ways. Um,
over the years and, um, yeah. And that's where I
(06:21):
got the bug for broadcasting really at that point in time.
S3 (06:25):
Yes. Well, you talk about Peter White as a mentor
to you, a blind broadcaster, and I'm sure you're influencing
lots of other people now. Um, tell us how you
got into journalism and about the barriers that there might
have been and why you wanted to do it.
S4 (06:43):
Well, my first real break was, um, complete accident. Of course,
these things often are. Is that my dad, who I
think I mentioned was a cab driver. He picked up
a blind chap called Kevin Mulhern, who was a blind producer, um,
of television programmes back in the 80s. And he got
talking to him about me. I was at university and Kevin,
(07:04):
bless him, said, why doesn't he come in and have
a long come along and have a look at my
television production company, and we're putting a programme together and
come and have a look. And I came and had
a look and and he introduced me to some people
at the BBC. And then during some of the summer
vacations at Oxford, I got some sort of, you know,
unpaid researcher work on various programmes on radio four in
(07:26):
the UK. And that's really how it started. I hadn't
no real interest, you know, when I went to university
in being a journalist, although I'd been editor of the
school newspaper, um, at Worcester for a period of time. Um,
and then it was the sort of it was the
radio side of it that really grasped me. And I, um,
got to the end of my career at university, and
(07:48):
I applied for some of the BBC's prestigious, you know,
training schemes. They have a thing. They have a certainly
then a thing called the News Trainee Scheme. And I
applied and I didn't get it, and I applied a
second time and I didn't get it, although they did
ask me in and had a chat. And, you know,
there were some pretty senior people, one of whom said,
you know, I don't think a blind person can be
a reporter. And of course, in those days you could
(08:11):
say that perfectly. You know, legitimately you could in those days,
of course, uh, reject people for jobs on those grounds openly. Um,
there were no anti-discrimination laws at that point in time,
but there were enough people around, Stephen, fortunately, who were
prepared to take a punt on me, not least Thena Heschel,
(08:33):
the great producer of the In Touch program for so
many years who has given me stuff, but also in
the areas where I was more, I felt more, I
felt more interested, which was politics in particular. Um, so
people on, you know, programs like today in Parliament in
the UK, um, and and that gave me a, gave
me a break. And one particular or a couple of
(08:53):
particular people in the politics department there, uh, a man
called Bob Eggington, another one called Richard Eyre, who ran
the politics department at the time, just, you know, this untested,
untried 22 year old, They gave me a chance. You know,
they gave me a chance, you know, short little contract.
And it was around the time of the 92 election.
(09:14):
And I did a bit of that for local radio
at Westminster. The service that delivers for local radio. And,
and I absolutely loved it. And, um, and I didn't
mess up as far as I could tell. And, uh,
the contracts got longer and longer until I, you know,
got a job about a year later. Permanent job.
S3 (09:30):
Gary, has technology helped that? Because in your early days,
you really had to to struggle to find out what
was in the newspapers. You'd have to have friends in
the very early days to to read it to you.
Content has now become so, uh, easily available, so accessible.
The challenge is to decide what to read rather than
(09:52):
to find something to read.
S4 (09:54):
It's absolutely right. I mean, I used to have to
get people round on a Sunday to read the Sunday
papers to me. I used to have to get people
to read sort of cuttings from the research library, where
they would photocopy cuttings if you were researching a story. Um,
I remember, you know, I had a girlfriend who, you know,
made her read cuttings at night and I'm sure she
sort of thought that was probably not what, what you
(10:16):
were meant to do of an evening. But, um, um,
things have got a lot easier, uh, with technology. But
at the same time, the numbers of sources of information,
you know, the amount of stuff has just multiplied beyond
absolute recognition. Now, back in those days, if you kept
yourself across 3 or 4 newspapers, you were okay. Yeah.
(10:38):
I mean, it's just not like that anymore, isn't it?
So our problem now is, I think, to sort of
how do we most efficiently use the tools we have,
like on the iPhone, on the PC or the Mac?
How do we most efficiently use those to get to
what we need quickly, uh, and to sift through the noise?
So I, for example, I tend to farm out things
(11:00):
like the sort of trawling of things like X to
my producer and I say, yeah, just keep an eye
on it for me, because by definition it's linear. So
you kind of have to read everything to, to get
an idea. Whereas, you know, if you can see and
my producer is cited, she can scan it for me,
you know, just keep an eye on, you know, anything
(11:22):
that's relevant to what we're doing. Same with some of
the other social media channels. You know, we have these
sort of teams. We use Microsoft Teams a lot and
we use WhatsApp groups a lot as well. And sometimes
the sheer volume of messages is just too much. And
and again, we can only read them in a linear fashion. Um,
(11:43):
and it can just take ages to learn nothing or,
you know, to, to have not help in any way.
So I try to be quite ruthless about what I
do read, what I do focus on.
S3 (11:57):
I was having a conversation recently with, uh, my brother, actually,
and he said to me, Stephen, you might think your
productivity is going to go up with AI and associated technologies,
and it will. But for people who can see, it'll
probably go up even more. And so there's sort of
a bigger gap. The bar is higher. I thought that
(12:20):
was pretty insightful.
S4 (12:22):
Yeah, I think so. I mean, this digital divide that
people talk about. Um, it hasn't it certainly hasn't gone away. Um,
and often we find, don't we, we take a, you know,
two steps forward and one step back. And then, but
also suddenly, just suddenly, things can break as we know, um,
you know, someone rolls out a new version of this
(12:43):
or that, and suddenly something's broken, and, and you're kind
of floundering around. And also, I think, um, it's very
difficult to explain to one's employers or people, the people
you work with, the sort of usability issue. They just
they'll just say, is it accessible? And of course, it's
very often very difficult to answer that question in a
straightforward way because, well, yeah, I mean, it kind of talks, but,
(13:07):
you know, can I use it in a useful way quickly? Mhm. Um,
and by the time you started to say that they've
lost interest, um, so it's, you know, I mean I'm
constantly frustrated in my environment with things being rolled out
and you, you say has it been tested. Is there
any is there a sort of a tutorial for someone
(13:27):
who can't see the screen? And they say, well, not really,
you know, and, and I say, well, okay, well why
don't you unplug the mouse, turn the screen off and
see how you get on with it?
S3 (13:38):
It's more than voiceover speaking when you open the app.
S4 (13:42):
Yes that's right. That's absolutely right. It's there's so much
more to it than that. But that's quite a hard
thing to communicate at times.
S2 (13:55):
I'm Sam Colley and you're listening to Talking Vision on
Vision Australia Radio. Associated stations of the Radio Reading Network
and the Community Radio Network. I hope you enjoyed the
first half of Stephen Jolly there with Gary O'Donohue. If
you missed any part of the interview with Stephen or Gary,
(14:17):
or you'd love to hear it again, you can either
find it through Talking Vision on the podcast app of
your choice, through the Vision Australia Library, or through the
Interview Highlights feed, where you can find an extended version
of the conversation with Stephen and Gary. However, in the meantime,
(14:39):
let's get back to Stephen. Right now.
S3 (14:42):
I'm speaking with Gary O'Donoghue. He's the BBC's chief North
America correspondent. You might have heard him on BBC World
Television or BBC World Service Radio. I hope you have
because he does a great job. He's blind and he's
telling us about his work. Tell us about the place
of Braille in your life.
S4 (15:00):
Uh, Braille is absolutely essential. I was taught braille as
soon as I lost my sight. In fact, you know,
like a number of days after I emerged from hospital
at eight years old, the partially sighted school I was at,
you know, took me out of my classes, sat me
on a bench outside, and a Braille teacher turned up
and started teaching me braille. And, um, that carried on
through the blind schools. I went to, you know, in
(15:23):
at Worcester. We had a whole year at the beginning
dedicated to getting people up to a braille, you know,
a good Braille reading standard. Um, you know, the first
year was that was what it was all about. Um,
and I use it all the time. I use it
in my work all the time for reading scripts. Um,
I use it electronically also, when I'm on the road
(15:46):
for reading scripts and taking notes and taking notes in
press conferences or, um, writing out a piece for BBC
online or something like that. So it is, it is
central I use I read a little bit with Braille
for pleasure. I do use audiobooks, probably more, but with
the advent of things like the the Kindle app and
also the Apple books, you know, sometimes I increasingly nowadays
(16:10):
kind of do a mixture of reading, particularly with non-fiction,
where I'll read a couple of pages with the speech,
and then I might read a page or two with
the Braille display. And I find that kind of really
aids my concentration. And it, you know, it keeps up my,
my braille reading as well. Make sure I'm doing plenty
more of that. Um, and, and it's just a if
(16:31):
I find it a very enjoyable way of consuming a book. Actually.
S3 (16:35):
It's challenging when to step in and buy a new device,
isn't it, because it's changing all the time?
S4 (16:40):
Yes it is. Um, but but in many ways. Right.
You know, not some things haven't changed, which is, you know,
40 cells of, of electronic Braille. You know, we had
that 30 years ago and we still have that now,
don't we? And now there's all sorts of things that
are changing with multiline braille displays, and we'll see, um,
(17:02):
how they I mean, that would be a joy for
me in a studio environment presenting. I do some presentation
of live programs now on the World Service, like NewsHour
and the weekend. Um, and, you know, I'm still working
off paper with that scripts being printed run into the studio,
handed to me three seconds before I read them and stuff, because.
S3 (17:18):
You've got all the lines under your under your fingers.
You're not. Absolutely. Yeah.
S4 (17:23):
You're not scrabbling around and you're not reliant on, you know, devices.
But if they could produce a multiline display that would
allow me to just use the computer and have a
sort of because you get a sense of how much
there is to read and where the audio comes in,
for example, when you've got it physically in front of
you that you don't get when you only see a
line at a time on a Braille display. So a
(17:43):
multiline thing would be. The thing I've noticed, though, is
that when they refresh these multiline things there, it's too
noisy for a studio environment. You can't can't have that
noise going on in a studio. Um, it'll be too distracting.
So hopefully at some point there'll be a technology that
refreshes gives me ten lines of Braille. Refreshing silently. I'd
definitely go for that.
S3 (18:03):
I want to take you back though, to another application
of noisy, very busy environments. Give us with your time
in America three. Let's call them high adrenaline moments.
S4 (18:17):
Three high adrenaline moments. Uh, well, I suppose, um, we
don't just, for example, we don't just do politics in America.
So I remember things like, you know, being sent on, um, uh,
you know, sent out for on various mass shootings at
times and, you know, and times when we were sent to,
(18:38):
to cover these mass shootings, which are all too regular
in America, as you know. You know, when the the
gunmen are still on the loose and you're hanging around
a place that he's, you know, where he shot people
up and, uh, not knowing what's going to happen. And
we certainly had that in a couple of the deployments.
I went to, uh, also going to hurricanes. I know
I've stood in hurricanes. I stood in a category five
(19:00):
hurricane in, um, in Florida, Hurricane Michael, um, which absolutely
devastated the panhandle of Florida. Um, and that was pretty, uh,
pretty high intensity. But I suppose the in terms of
the most pressurized, one of the most pressurized moments has
got to be when, uh, I was there when, um,
(19:21):
a man, um, Thomas Crookes attempted to assassinate, uh, President Trump, um,
just before the 2024 election.
S3 (19:30):
Absolutely sensational radio that you were at at the rally
and then outside.
S4 (19:35):
Well, it was the it was quite a moment. And,
you know, it's one of those things where you kind
of it was a it was an early summer's evening. Uh,
we were just, you know, doing some gentle lives. I thought,
this is just on our way, actually, to the Republican
National Convention in Milwaukee. We thought, okay, here's a he's
doing a rally in in Pennsylvania. We can drive there
(19:56):
and then fly from Pittsburgh and get to the RNC
the next day, do a few lives. He may or
may not announce his vice president tonight. Who knows? And
then suddenly the whole world kind of comes apart when
you hear these shots. And and I knew straight away
it was shooting. You know, the one thing about the
sad thing about living in America for so long is
that you you do know what shots sound like. Um, and, uh,
(20:20):
and then the next few hours was absolute. I mean,
that's I've never felt been under such pressure as a broadcaster,
as a professional, uh, as those few hours. And we
were fortunate enough to, just because of where we were placed,
that we weren't really under any restrictions. Um, because a
lot of journalists who were there were sort of penned
(20:41):
into a pen and we weren't, um, for various reasons.
And it meant we could talk to everyone who'd been there.
And we we, um, we found this guy who'd actually
seen the shooter and tried to warn the Secret Service
before he took his shots at Donald Trump.
S3 (20:59):
He saw him on a roof, didn't he?
S4 (21:01):
He did. He saw him climb onto the roof. He
saw him and he pointed him out. And the Secret Service,
you know, he was trying to get their attention, trying
to get them to take it seriously. And then he was, uh,
he was it was a very interesting moment, Steven, from
a visually impaired point of view, because, you know, only
afterwards did someone say to me, do you know what
(21:21):
that guy looked like? And I said, no, I don't
know what he said. Well, he's got this kind of
weird fake orange hair. He's like, um, uh, got a
can of beer in his hand, etc. and I was thinking,
if I could see, I wonder if I'd have put
him on air. Yeah. You know, I wonder if I'd
have been a bit worried about what he was going
to say, because it was a really explosive situation. People
(21:43):
were were very angry, very upset. It was a, you know,
one guy walked past me when I was on air
and said, they shot first. This is war, right? So,
you know the atmosphere was was absolutely fever pitch. And
if I put someone in there and he kind of
spouted a load of nonsense, that could have made things
a lot worse. But I just listened to him. Obviously
(22:06):
I didn't know what he looked like, but I listened
to him and he kept saying to me, this was
off air beforehand. He was consistent, and I kept asking
him to repeat himself, and he was consistent with what
he was saying. I think, okay, this guy, you know,
does know what he's seen, you know? And so I
put him on air and he told this story. And
what he said has completely stood the test of time.
He was, you know, genuinely the first eyewitness to what
(22:29):
had happened. Um, and that clip, um, ended up getting
sort of, you know, sent around. I mean, I think
the last time we looked that clip of him had
been viewed like in terms of social media 300 million times.
And you realize with that kind of thing, you realize
(22:50):
that you kind of you're reaching Like the whole globe.
S3 (22:55):
Now, you and your team have been recognized for that
piece of broadcasting, haven't you?
S4 (23:01):
We were. We have. We were fortunate enough to to
win a Royal Television Society award earlier this year for,
for breaking news in London. And so we went into
a went to a fancy hotel in Park Lane and um,
had a few sherbets and um, and got an award
and uh, and I, I hadn't really thought about what
(23:24):
I was going to say if we won, but I did,
I did, I decided that as I was walking up
to the stage, I am going to make a point here.
And I did make a point there about, you know,
the blind people and, and how, you know, there are
barriers and there are still barriers for, for blind journalists
and how, you know, I hoped that this would, you know,
(23:45):
put some of that doubt to bed, you know, about
blind people working in television and, and it got a very,
very good, very positive response, not just from the room,
which was very warming. You know, this is all your peers, um,
but also in the sort of online as well. It
got it got very well received. So we're very, very lucky.
We also got nominated for an Emmy, which we didn't win.
(24:05):
But I'll take an Emmy nomination any day, which is
very nice. Yeah. Pretty good.
S3 (24:10):
So tell me, when you're doing a project like that,
an assignment like that. Um, who do you have with you? You're.
I'm sure you're they're your best friends, um, in that
particular situation. But your friends and colleagues working with you,
how does that work? How many of you are there
and what happens?
S4 (24:26):
We tend to work in teams of three. So what
we tend to have is a cameraman who's also what
we call nowadays a shoot edit. So they can also
edit video. Uh, there's a correspondent and a producer. Um,
and that's true for, you know, me. And it's also
true for my sighted colleagues, that team that tends to
be the basic team. Um, and you might be doing
(24:49):
a mixture of lives, what we call lives, In other words,
you know, stand up in front of a camera, talk
live to the presenter in the studio in London. You
might be you're doing a lot of what they call
digital stuff now. So live these live pages on the
website that are kind of, you know, have sort of
bite size 100 word contributions on rolling stories. Those are
(25:10):
a huge priority for us. Now you're sort of witnessing stuff,
writing stuff up, doing little bits of analysis. You might
be filing radio voice pieces, which are like the 42nd
bits that go in the news bulletins. Um, you might
be doing radio packages, you might be doing television packages. Um,
you might be doing, you know, sit down interviews. But yeah,
(25:31):
it's three of you and a car is what you need.
S3 (25:35):
So when you were in, I think it was New
York when, um, Joe Biden was confirmed as winning the
2020 election, it was a Saturday night high excitement. Uh,
and BBC World Television were crossing. World news television were
crossing to you. You would have had a producer helping
you source the content that you needed to explain, etc..
S4 (25:59):
I think 2020 I was actually at the white House. Um,
I was in New York for 2016 at Hillary Clinton's
party when, um, she lost. And that was an extraordinary
experience because this sort of party suddenly evaporated and all
these people dancing were then crying. Um, but in 2020,
I was yeah, I would have had, um, a producer.
(26:20):
We probably in those circumstances, when you have a sort
of big story, you sometimes have engineers around as well,
and there might be more than one team. So there
could be two teams of 3 in 1 location. One
could be doing, um, lives, and another one could be gathering, uh,
to cut a package immediately. So, um, so there can
(26:41):
be a mixture of things. But yeah, the basic unit
is a is a team of of three.
S2 (26:51):
And that's all the time we have for today. You've
been listening to Talking Vision. Talking vision is a Vision
Australia radio production. Thanks to all involved with putting the
show together every week. And remember, we love hearing from you.
So please get in touch anytime on our email at
Talking Vision at. That's talking vision all. One word at
(27:16):
Vision Australia. But until next week it's Sam Coley saying
bye for now.
S1 (27:27):
You can contact Vision Australia by phoning us anytime during
business hours on one 384 7406. That's one 384 74
six or by visiting Vision Australia, that's Vision Australia.
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