Murdoch radio leads way for vision impaired

By Abbie Major Perth’s most famous tourist attractions are being brought to life for the vision-impaired, thanks to a new program featured on Vision Australia Radio titled ‘The Tourist’. Produced by 21-year-old Murdoch University Sound and Radio student Ethan Kavanagh, The Tourist includes audio described tours and staff interviews from locations such as SciTech, Fremantle Prison and the WA Maritime Museum. Mr Kavanagh used his third-year university placement unit to create unique content for Vision Australia Radio that is aimed at young people. “We wanted to create something for the younger audience that was different than just reading the important parts of the newspaper,” Mr Kavanagh said. “I wanted to be as tactile as possible and involve the other senses – if something was rough to touch then I would try to describe it. We can take so much information from things just by the way they sound and feel.” Kavanagh’s project has received accolades from the family of two sisters who use the service. Mother Raquelle Hanne-Williams, who has 12-year-old identical twin daughters who are losing their sight to the genetic condition optic neuropathy, says a detailed audio tour of Perth’s attractions is an ideal way to educate vision-impaired children on the history of Perth. “Our daughters can not read the normal-sized print on things such as a plaque,” she said. “A verbal description of the feature they are looking at is so much more beneficial to their development. The podcast means that they can learn so much more about the attractions – all the things that they can not see.” Find The Tourist at the Vision Australia website. [soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/342720585″]