Emma Tracey interview: replay or read the summary now

Introduction

This episode of the Sound Without Sight podcast features an interview with Emma Tracey, a blind podcast producer, presenter, and journalist working at the BBC. Emma presents BBC’s weekly disability and mental health podcast, Access All, and she can often be heard on BBC World Service, Radio 4, and 5 Live. 

Emma shares insight into a range of topics including:

• Her pathway into journalism.
• Her current roles at the BBC. 
• And the production process for the Access All podcast. 

This interview was recorded live, as part of the Sound Without Sight Monthly Meet-up Session for September 2024, featuring questions submitted by our community. 

This article includes links to listen to the podcast, a summary, resources mentioned in the interview, and the full transcript. 

Listen to podcast

Summary

Preparation and scripting

Emma emphasises the importance of preparation in her role as a podcast producer and presenter. She often uses braille to jot down keywords, bullet points, and essential information to guide her during recordings, rather than reading from a fully scripted text. This method allows her to interpret and convey information more naturally.

Content is key

Emma expresses that her passion is more about the message than the technical aspects, which has allowed her to concentrate on storytelling. Focus on your content and storytelling rather than getting bogged down by technical details. While some technical knowledge can be helpful, it is more important to concentrate on your goals and what message you want to share.

Production process

The production process for Access All typically involves recording for about two hours, which includes multiple sections, an intro, and an outro. After recording, the audio is sent off for editing. Emma also discusses the collaborative nature of the production, where she engages in research, finds relevant statistics, and identifies case studies to create compelling content.

Audience engagement

Emma highlights the need to present information in a way that is easily digestible for listeners, who may be multitasking while listening. She advises focusing on one or two main points to ensure clarity and engagement.

Technology and accessibility

Emma reflects on the evolution of technology in audio production, noting her use of tried-and-tested SoundForge software due to time constraints in learning new tools. She mentions the challenges of accessibility in audio recording equipment and expresses a desire to learn more about modern editing software, such as REAPER.

Career journey

Emma shares her career path, starting as a researcher and gradually moving up to her current role as a lead presenter. She discusses the importance of gaining experience in various roles, including production, to better understand the entire process of creating audio content.

Support and collaboration

Emma acknowledges the role of support workers in her work, particularly in navigating technology and ensuring accessibility. She emphasizes the value of collaboration within her team to produce high-quality content.

Advice for aspiring podcasters

Emma encourages those interested in podcasting to have a clear idea of their goals and the content they wish to create. She suggests that understanding the purpose of a podcast can guide the learning process and help in selecting the right tools and techniques. Explore online resources, and consider courses that will allow you to get a basic understanding of the technology.

Community inclusion

Diverse voices in media, particularly in disability-related topics, enrich our world and allow communities to feel seen and heard. Emma mentions the importance of community interaction, stating that she often receives emails from people sharing stories and asking to be interviewed. This engagement helps in producing relevant and impactful content for Access All. 

Resources referenced

• TAVIP Masterclass on Accessible Podcast Production
• Knowledge Hub article: Accessible podcast equipment
• BBC Extend programme
• BBC Careers website
• RNIB Connect Radio
• School of Podcasting website
• Sound School Podcast

Full transcript

Please note this transcript was automatically generated, and may contain erroers. 

Sound Without Sight, connect, collaborate and create.

Hello and welcome to the Sound Without Sight podcast.

In this episode, we welcome Emma Tracey.

Emma is a blind podcast producer, presenter and journalist working at the BBC.

She presents BBC’s weekly disability and mental health podcast, Access All, and she can often be heard on BBC World Service, Radio 4 and 5 Live.

Emma shares insights into a range of topics, including her pathway into journalism, her current roles at the BBC and the production process for the Access All podcast.

This interview was recorded live as part of the Sound Without Sight monthly meetup session for September 2024.

Featuring questions submitted by our community.

Emma starts with an overview of her career journey so far.

We hope you enjoy.

I have been in the BBC a long time, just about 19 years now.

But before that, I was thinking about radio from quite an early age.

I did work experience in my local radio station as a teenager, and then after I did communications media studies at university, so as a BA with a focus on radio, we had mini-disc players then.

That was the main mode of recording stuff.

And then I took over a tape magazine for blind people from a guy called Stuart Lawler who used to run it.

And that was with a university in Cork, UCC.

I ended up running that from a little port cabinet, my mom and dad’s back garden.

I copied tapes, put them in wallets, sent them out to 200 people every month.

So I was really making a podcast 20 years ago, more than 20 years ago.

Before podcasting was a thing.

Before podcasting was a thing.

So it was basically a podcast on a cassette tape.

And I had a desk that actually had all the slidey things and the knobs, no touch screens, it’s great.

And it was really good.

And I loved that blind space and having fun around blindness and technology and books and stuff that was useful for blind people.

And I really loved making a difference and feeling like blind people were getting something out of it.

So that was that.

I was just thinking actually, it’s quite funny because I remember feeling really similarly when I was young.

I wonder how common that is among blind and partially sighted people like that kind of desire just to record stuff and reproduce stuff and spread knowledge in that way.

I mean, I just love the world of recorded sound.

I think it’s interesting because I did go to a special school until I was maybe 15.

And then I went home to my local small town secondary school.

But I don’t think I ever really felt like I had a community.

I mean, I had blind friends in special school, etc.

But I really, in my early 20s, sort of realized that there was a disability community and a blindness community, and that you could just have a lot of fun with it and find people who were very much your people.

I actually went on an RNIB vacation scheme when I was a teenager and met one of my best blind friends there.

And that was a big change for me.

But it was, yeah, it just, I just loved it.

And I loved being a person who could sort of meet a need.

So that was really good.

And then I interviewed a guy called Damon Rose for the magazine.

He’s a blind guy who used to do a podcast called Blind Kiss, which was really funny and naughty and silly about blindness.

And it was, you know, it would take me about four hours to download this audio on my university campus computer.

So he was doing podcasts before podcasts were a thing as well.

But then he went on to work in BBC and start BBC’s disability website, which was called Ouch!

Then.

And I emailed him for the magazine.

And then I just said, if you’ve got any jobs, let me know.

And he just said, well, sign up to the BBC jobs portal and, and, you know, wait your turn.

So, so I did.

And I, in 2005, the end of October, I moved to London from rural Ireland, a part-time job on a six month contract.

And I’m still working in that sort of area that like 19 years later.

So wow.

I mean, yeah.

I mean, what a journey.

What a stint at the BBC as well.

Am I right in thinking that that initial role that you, that you started when you first joined the BBC was, was more of a research one?

Well, yes, because I was 23.

I didn’t have, I couldn’t get a job at home.

I couldn’t get a radio job that I wanted.

You know, I think I hadn’t really learned.

I don’t know if I still have, but I really hadn’t learned how to prove that I was as good, if not better than the other person and that I should be chosen over the sighted person to do the same job.

But I think that was really difficult to push through.

And as we all know, it still is.

And yeah, so I had no experience.

So I started as a researcher, then became an assistant producer.

And this was on the Ouch podcast.

So it was podcasts all the way along.

But we also coded the website.

We wrote articles, we ran message boards, we did outreach.

So we went to the big exhibitions like nadex and that kind of thing.

We did so many different things.

And then we moved to the news area of the BBC.

So we were in a different area before.

And then we changed to journalists.

And that’s what I am now is called a journalist.

And then I, a couple of years ago, we rebranded the podcast from Ouch to Access All.

And I became a co-presenter.

And then at Christmas, I became the lead presenter.

Wow.

I mean, that is a proper journey.

So many different roles there.

I guess thinking of just in case other people would like to follow a similar pathway.

I wouldn’t follow it.

I wouldn’t follow it.

It’s a long road.

How did you find the research role, though?

What does that involve that’s kind of different from what you do now?

Oh, you know, it was great because we were a really, really small team.

So we actually did a bit of everything.

But what I suppose what it really did was it made me ring people and talk to people and use the internet and find out things.

And, you know, ask the person I’m speaking to who I should speak to next and just to get the confidence to find out things and to find out what I didn’t know.

And to find out what disabled people wanted to know, like to realize what they wanted to know and then go find that out.

So that was a really good grounding and just, you know, hitting the phones and, you know, writing.

You know, we did do a bit of everything though, because we were a very small team, but definitely it gave me a really good grounding and just being really brass tacks and just getting the information that we needed.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think that’s a really important skill, just being able to reach out to people and have that confidence to do that.

And yeah, that’s going to be important in pretty much any career, I think.

Yes, absolutely.

So you said, so most of your career so far at the BBC has been spent as a producer as opposed to a presenter.

That’s a more recent part of your role.

I guess for people who aren’t so familiar, what does a producer do in the context of radio and audio?

Well, in the context of BBC radio and audio, certainly the producer creates the program.

So does the research, if they don’t have a researcher, writes the script.

I mean, a presenter goes back in and tweaks the script, so it’s in their language.

Then in the recording, they sit behind the glass and talk in the presenter’s ear and make sure that the presenter keeps to time and hits all the important touch points, reacts fully to what the guest is saying and follows through on things, makes sure that everything is balanced.

So the producer is there to keep me right basically.

Then the producer goes ahead and edits then the audio and puts the podcast online as well.

So we have a small team and usually what we do is when the podcast is recorded, maybe two producers will take a piece of audio each and edit that and then we’ll get it mixed and stuff.

But I did all of that and now I do less of that because I’m doing the presenting.

Yeah, I think it’s an interesting diversion perhaps from the music world where the producer is generally the sound person, the person that is creatively involved, but it’s more using a DAW and editing, which obviously is encompassed in the role that you do.

But yeah, I think in the broadcast and in the film and TV world, the producer is a lot more of the overarching process and you’re involved across the whole process.

Well, you lead the process really.

I mean, you’ve got an editor, you’ve got senior producers, you’ve got producers.

Well, you lead, I loved being a producer because you have a lot of control of what happens in the program.

The presenter is saying the words, but you’ve put them in their mouth nearly.

Although, obviously, presenter can go rogue at any time.

But yeah, it is great being a producer.

And actually, what I find is a lot of people and a lot of disabled people and a lot of blind people will come straight in and say, I want to present, that’s what I want to do.

Because it feels accessible.

It feels like an accessible thing to do.

You talk, you know, and it feels easier, maybe looking in at it.

But I will always say to people who come straight in and say, I want to present.

I always say you could really learn a lot from producing.

It really gives you a lot of knowledge about how everything works.

And it makes your life so much easier as a presenter when you’ve been in the other side.

Yeah, I can totally imagine that.

Just having that kind of pop-down view almost of the whole process and, I guess, presenting yourself in such a way that is easy to edit.

Yes.

I mean, that doesn’t always work, but you can see what the producer wants, I think, a lot more clearly, definitely.

Interesting.

So got our first community question now from Joe Oakley, who’s asking, my son’s blind and hosts a radio show on our local community station.

His ambition is to be a professional radio presenter on a commercial station.

What advice would you give him to help him achieve this?

Is there anything in particular?

That’s a big question, I know.

I have never been a presenter on a commercial radio station.

I’ve never been a presenter on a radio station.

I’m a podcast presenter, but I honestly think just keep doing, I think it’s great that he’s doing what he’s doing.

You learn by doing, you get better by doing more and more and more of what you’re doing.

Get a mentor, find a mentor and use them.

Look for opportunities for work experience, to sit in on programs, just to shadow people.

And I think that get yourself out there, say yes to things, get yourself asked to do things, to speak in public, get your name a little bit more known.

Just keep annoying them basically as well.

Thank you.

No worries.

That’s the sort of thing he’s doing at the moment.

So he does it on the community one.

And then in his holidays, he goes in and joins in with other radio shows.

And they’re sort of letting him do a bit more.

And that’s the sort of thing he’s sort of doing at the moment.

He’s met some presenters from Radio Kent, because that’s our local one.

We went in and met him.

I mean, he’s only 12 at the moment.

Oh my goodness.

I mean, people who are really, you know, Peter White, who presents In Touch, he presented a radio show on Radio Solent for years and years and years and years and years.

And that was a live show.

And so he would have great advice for live radio.

I, you know, I haven’t done live radio.

I haven’t had to press the buttons.

We have a studio manager who presses the buttons for me.

So, you know, talking to blind presenters who currently do live radio or have done live radio is also a good way of…

So that, you know, I mean, you know, it’s taken me a long time to figure out how best to do my scripts and stuff like that.

And, you know, other blind people can give different advice on that as well.

Yeah, because also it’s being able to use the equipment and things like that.

That’s what you said.

Yeah.

And I think sometimes what it’ll…

You know, the equipment just isn’t accessible often.

I mean, I’m sure lots of these guys listening will be able to get you set up on something that was accessible.

But, you know, if you’re going into a radio station and you’re just going in to fill in for somebody and that kind of thing, I think one of the things we have to learn as blind people is to that maybe sometimes you need to just get the bits that you absolutely need to be accessible.

So the fader that he needs, put a bump on on it or do you know what I mean?

It’s just a little, a few little things so that he can just get by.

And that’s a bit rubbish, isn’t it?

But I think that’s…

No, I know what you mean.

Yeah.

And the way you said about, you spent time recording and that’s him totally.

He pretends he’s a news presenter and yet totally recording himself all the time.

Yeah, I think it’s I think some of it is, you know, aside kids, you’re drawing pictures and you’re taking photos and you’re, you know, you’re you’re visualizing and you’re making a visual representation of what is around you.

I had a little Fisher Price tape recorder and it just it was great.

Me and my cousins used to do all sorts of silly things on it.

But I do think, you know, it’s just it’s the way we take in the world.

And that’s, you know, how why we can maybe deliver it sometimes really well as a as an audio project to other people.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Thank you.

No worries, Joe.

So another community one now from Felix who’s asking a bit more specifically about what do you feel like is the best route right now for trying to get into production within the BBC?

Are there any particular schemes that you’re aware of?

Well, I think so there’s obviously there’s the Extend scheme, which is on and off, but I think it’s looking pretty good at the moment.

And actually, they’re doing quite a lot of work to get people interested in Extend and BBC had quite a big recruitment drive for Extend really recently.

So look up EXTEND, BBC Extend, and that’s specifically for disabled people, all different levels, placements at all different levels, contracts at all different levels, I should say.

And I think they’re about a year long.

Like it’s not, you know, people like Paul Carter, who was just presenting on CLICK went in on the Extend scheme.

I applied for it and I didn’t get it 20 years ago.

Yeah.

So it’s not a, you know, it’s really very high value.

And then there is, you know, going on the mainstream schemes, you know, there’s an apprenticeship scheme.

There is a journalist trainee scheme where you, you know, it’s like doing a master’s while you’re in the BBC.

So there are a lot of things, bbc.co.uk/careers, just have a good, I’ll troll around that.

But I mean, I think extend is a really good option.

People like Hatal, Bapodra, she’s in BBC.

She came through one of those schemes as well.

She would be able to tell you a lot about it.

She’s blind.

So I think that is a good scheme to get in on.

Definitely is.

A lot of my disabled colleagues came through on that scheme.

And, you know, they’re as good as all the other journalists in there.

It’s just hard to get in, isn’t it?

And it’s hard to get your needs met and get your flexibility in your tech.

You know, it shouldn’t be hard to get your technology.

Access to Work should be able to sort out that.

But I think sometimes it’s build confidence to go in on a scheme.

Absolutely.

And I think that’s a really good point, that there is the Extend scheme, for example, but not to ignore mainstream routes as well, because there’s no reason that you shouldn’t be able to go for them.

Absolutely no reason at all, no.

Do you mind if I jump in quickly in that?

Yeah.

You mentioned Access to Work just now.

I’m just curious to know, because earlier on in the session, you mentioned, obviously, that you were from rural Ireland.

When you moved over to London, I’m assuming that was for job purposes.

How was, did you apply for Access to Work around that time?

I did.

I was very lucky because I had a blind manager.

So I knew how to help me figure out what I needed.

So I was very lucky.

And at the time, the BBC had an internal access team who provided support workers, etc.

So I was really, really, really lucky.

I mean, Access to Work is the government’s best kept secret, isn’t it?

So, but it is getting more well known and it is worth applying for.

And I know there are waiting lists, but it is worth applying for, for sure.

Thank you.

Cool.

So I think now if we think about Access All, the podcast as it is right now, how big is the team on that and what’s your role beyond presenting?

So we have an editor who might cover other programs as well.

And then we have a senior journalist, a journalist and me, that’s generally, and I’m also a journalist.

So that’s the kind of hierarchy.

And then the senior journalist and the journalist will usually do the kind of nuts and bolts.

As people know me a bit better in the community, I get like people emailing me with stories and asking to be interviewed, et cetera, et cetera.

So I will do quite a lot of production coming up to the recording day.

So I will often have a section that I’m producing.

And then on the day, someone else will studio produce it.

So I will have done the research, maybe, I will have had the idea, got the person done the research, got the clips that we want to drop in, maybe got them, you know, done my notes, et cetera.

And then on the day, someone else will talk in my ear, cause I can’t talk in my own ear.

So I still am very involved in the production side of things.

I will go into the script and I will look at everything that everyone else has written and I will make sure that it is in my own, in my voice.

And I will write parts of the script as well, like the intros and the outros and all that.

It’s easier if I write them because I’m the one who’s going to say them.

I actually have gone rogue old school and I now, once the script has signed off, I get big cue cards, like big flash cards and my Perkins Brailler and I braille it out in shorthand.

Like it takes some time, but it’s kind of like studying when you do flashcards and studying, it kind of goes into your head while you’re doing it.

So it is a benefit.

So I learned braille.

I born blind, I learned braille.

But then blind people in Ireland weren’t given braille displays for a very long time.

So I didn’t read braille very much from maybe 18 onwards.

And so I don’t read quick enough to read a script like verbatim at speed.

I just don’t.

Peter White can do it.

Gary O’Donoghue can do it.

I cannot.

So also our podcast, we have to read out statements from government.

There’s things that I need to get really right.

But often I can interpret something and like say it rather than read it and just like know what I want to say and say it.

So it’s not fully scripted.

So yeah, I sit down for half an hour, 45 minutes and I braille it out.

Yeah.

So would you have like kind of keywords for each kind of section just to kind of prompt you?

Yes.

Well, yeah.

Keywords, bullet points.

I mean, you wouldn’t be any braille readers on this call wouldn’t be able to read it.

Do you know, it’s my scribbles.

You know, it’s what I need.

Yeah.

So it’s not comprehensible really to anybody, but it’s just what I need.

And it’s, yeah, keywords, names, dates, you know, numbers, stats, questions.

I’ll, you know, if we’re doing interviewing a person, you might have four or six kind of pillars questions.

So, you know, the who, what, where, when, why, how, that kind of thing.

So I just put in the keywords for those.

And then sometimes I just put a line in saying, this is what this bit is about.

And then I’ll just go off on one.

So it’s it’s a mixture.

It’s just what works for me.

And it means that I only have the producer in my ear and the guests in my ear if they’re not in the studio with me.

Before I had the laptop in my ear as well, and I had the Braille display because I had the Braille display to read it, but I also needed to just fly up and down through it with Jaws as well.

So it was a lot.

And actually I feel so much freer.

So I had a Mantis Braille display and it sometimes let me down.

You know, it’s sometimes if I brought the file over from my computer, it wouldn’t work or it got stuck.

But what’s really funny is, so literally the cards, like I can’t, they can’t turn themselves off or anything.

But when I did a show live from the Edinburgh festivals, well, not live, but you know, in front of an audience, the very first thing that happened, and I actually didn’t make it into the episode, was I opened a bottle of water and it was one of those flip top, you know, really cheapy kind of skinny cap where you flip off the cap.

I know where this is going.

Yeah, it just went all over my first two cards.

But to be honest, by the time I go in there, I know what I’m doing already.

And at the worst, the producer can deliver me the stats and things.

If I, you know, if everything goes to absolute pot, it’s not going to, it’s not the end of the world, but that’s come with age, you know, to know that it’s not the end of the world.

And to know that if someone asks me, because I do quite a lot of impact, we call it, where I go and talk about the podcast and talk about the podcast stories on other bits of the BBC, like BBC News Channel and 5 Live and stuff like that.

And, you know, if someone asks me, so we’re talking about disability and employment.

And then I say something like, well, one of the reasons that employment is low is because people’s housing isn’t right.

And if you can’t have a shower and you can’t get in and out of your house, how do you, you know, it’s much, much harder to hold down job.

And then someone might ask me, oh yeah, tell me all about disability and housing.

And I won’t know, you know, I won’t have all of that information in my head at that moment, because I’m great at sucking up a load of information and spitting it out.

But I don’t have information from six months ago in there very much.

So I’ll have to, you know, I’ve become much, much better at saying, well, I don’t know the absolute figures, but blah, blah, blah, you know, rather than like freaking out and thinking, oh, no, I don’t need.

I don’t know this.

I don’t know this.

How am I going to answer this?

I, you know, I’m much better at bluffing my way through now.

Yeah, I think that’s that’s totally fine.

It is just that that self-confidence really, and if you just explain actually those very specific things, and people will understand that it’s not actually reasonable to expect you to have every fact in your head.

Well, I think I did.

I used to think it was.

I think I used to think I should have like the people would expect that, you know, so yeah, I think that’s been the most freeing thing about being a bit older is not being afraid to say I don’t know something.

So one of the takeaways there is don’t rely solely on technology, but also don’t spill water on your flashcards.

Yeah, check out the open your bottle of water before you’re in front of the audience and figure out how it opens and closes.

That was pure lack of foresight on my account, on my part.

But also it’s great that actually when it came to it, you remembered what you needed to anyway.

Yeah, yeah, I didn’t panic, but I didn’t panic.

That was the main thing.

It was funny.

Yeah, absolutely.

I was wondering if you would mind just going into a little bit about the full production process of an episode of Access All, like what happens at different stages.

Is it the same episode by episode?

Is there a set process that it goes through?

Yes, it’s pretty similar.

We record for two hours or roughly two hours.

We usually do two sections and an intro and an outro and maybe a couple of other little bits.

And then the sections that go off and edit it.

And then the studio manager will mix it.

And then we will write a blurb and we will write social media.

And then we will upload it to the BBC machine that spits it out as a podcast various places.

And then I will go and do the impact that I talked about.

So, you know, talking about the stories and getting our stories out there.

We’ll have done social videos because actually I’m on camera all the time now, which is not what I signed up for 20 years ago at all.

So we have social videos for each one as well.

I think earlier in the process, sometimes we record the episode we’re doing and sometimes we record an interview that we’re going to use at a later date.

So we don’t always record in order or exactly what we’re doing that day.

That’s a little bit of a little bit of insight scoop there.

But we try to, but it doesn’t always work.

And in terms of producing, we do news stories, and usually they’re stories that haven’t made it to the mainstream media.

So there are stories, we did one there, the week just gone about older people with learning disabilities.

And a report came out that showed that many of them had really poor outcomes and weren’t living fulfilling lives.

And that hadn’t made it to the media and we did it.

So we need to, we spend time reading the report, getting the stats that are most important, finding a case study, as we call it, someone with a learning disability who can talk about their lives, finding out from the person who wrote the report, what their key things are and what the other things they want to say are, make it into a coherent, cohesive script.

Sometimes we do a call out on social media and we’ll get voice messages from people on our WhatsApp.

So there’s quite a lot involved, actually, and even looking for stories and looking for guests.

There’s quite a lot in there.

Yeah.

And I guess that process of prioritising and producing content, how do you decide what’s going to be on Access All in the coming weeks?

Are you approached with stories?

Are you constantly looking and researching?

How does that work?

We are constantly looking and researching.

We are sent stories by people.

We get feedback from the podcast that can lead to stories.

So we get emails from punters.

We get emails from charities and universities and wherever wants to sell a story.

People will just email us and tell us their story.

And then we will, you know, we had a woman email me and say that she hadn’t had a door on her bathroom for the last two years and that, you know, she was finding it really hard to get her council to do up her house so that she could live there safely.

She had MS and we ran with that story.

There was another guy who was stuck in his flat and his lift had been broken for a couple of weeks and he got in touch and we went in and talked to him.

So it’s a real mixture.

Sometimes we cover stuff that’s on BBC.

So like sometimes our interviews are BBC shows.

So the press offices will come to us with that.

Sometimes we find stuff on social media.

You know, something just pops up on, I’m in a serious disability slash blind echo chamber.

So, you know, it all pops up for me on social media.

Sometimes it’s something that’s happened in our lives because we are a disabled led team.

So it’s all sorts of things.

And then you have to decide which of the things you’re going to go with.

And that, I mean, you know, that’s a dark art.

I can’t really go into that.

But you know, like there’s all sorts of things going on there, including the resources we have at the time.

And if Emma’s on holiday or not, you know, there are so many things in play there.

But we try to do the most important story at the most important time.

That’s really interesting.

Really interesting.

So we’ve got another community question now from Amy Brights.

And it might be a question for the BBC machine rather than you.

So Amy’s asking, I would like to get my podcasts out on Apple podcasts and Spotify.

How do I get them onto these apps?

I have no idea.

I mean, I can jump in there.

Yeah, having done the Sound Without Sight podcast.

I mean, there are services, so podcast distribution services.

Some of them are more accessible than others.

I have to admit, I use Acast because they have a really good free plan.

And that’s how we distribute the Sound Without Sight podcast.

And that seems to work great.

There are paid ones as well, which get you slightly more detailed analytics and things like that.

But yeah, they will take your audio file, set you up an RSS feed with all your episodes in, and then distribute that to the main DSPs.

They call them basically the podcasting platforms that people go to listen to, including Spotify and Apple podcasts.

So hopefully that answers your question, Amy.

Yeah, thank you.

I’ve just started doing podcasts and really just a couple of months ago, and I’m finding out how to edit them effectively as well, because I’m blind and I’m using screen readers full time as well.

So at the minute, I’m trying to use GarageBand, but I’m going through the process still of editing them.

I’ve recorded a couple, but it’s trying to get them edited from there.

Okay.

And are there any particular things that you’re struggling with?

Like mainly, like putting the actual recording onto the GarageBand, and then sometimes it like sounds like a robot, and I can’t really get it to not sound like a robot.

Okay.

How are you recording the audio?

Just by voice memos.

Okay.

So I assume you’re using the phone, are you?

Or an iPad?

I’m using an iPad.

Yeah.

GarageBand is a bit fiddly with the iPad and like iPhones.

I’d recommend maybe trying something like Twisted Wave or Fair-Eye or Hocusye.

I think there’s an article on Sound Without Sight website anyway about tech and software and things.

So we do have some resources about GarageBand and more broadly about podcasting and producing podcasts.

I’ll make sure to link when we put this podcast out and I’ll email you as well, Amy, with those resources.

If you do want to stick with GarageBand, it might make sense to record directly into the app and then edit it so all the audio is there, ready and waiting, rather than using voice memos and then trying to export from there into GarageBand.

But yeah, I’m more than happy to follow up with any specific questions that you’ve got around that process or that workflow or whether there might be other apps that might be worth looking at.

I’m more than happy to have a chat about that another time.

Yeah, that sounds great.

Thank you.

Cool.

So, Emma, we kind of got onto it a little bit there already.

I was wondering, since you started working in audio and in podcasts, how has technology changed in that time?

In terms of sound editing, it’s probably not a huge amount.

There’s more out there in terms of sound editors.

I use a really old version of something called Soundforge, and that is literally because I haven’t been able to find time and headspace to learn a new editor.

So I actually quite like to learn Reaper.

We’ve got something in BBC called VCS that I need to really learn and I haven’t done, and that’s my bad really.

In terms of recording, I mean, I don’t do a massive amount of field recording these days, but we went to the Paralympics and I used one of the new Talking Zoom recorders, and it was a bit of a game changer.

I mean, it’s not fully accessible, it’s not fully talking, but it really did give me a lot more confidence.

I’ve always had a real lack of confidence in field recording because the recorder just isn’t accessible enough.

And you find that you’ve recorded over yourself or it hasn’t been recording and you’re not quite sure.

And I really hate it.

So I found it’s a tiny little Zoom, a 100 quid Zoom, and we were able to record on it in really good quality.

We were able to upload it to my phone and then upload it to Dropbox.

And that was brilliant.

So that was amazing.

And I was sitting in Gardinor, waiting on the Eurostar, taking the audio from my recorder onto my phone and then from my phone up to Dropbox so that my colleagues could then mix it and get it into an episode.

And I found that just fascinating because that sort of technology side of things isn’t really my area.

So that’s been a really big change for me is that little Zoom.

Yeah, I feel like you can totally overthink the tech side of thing because yeah, 100 pounds Zoom can produce an amazing recording.

I think it’s probably okay to say actually a lot of the stuff that ends up on radio, maybe not on the BBC, but a lot of stuff that does end up on radio and on podcast was actually recorded on a phone and then mixed down the line.

Obviously, you can get slightly better results with expensive gear, but it’s not the be all and end all.

I feel like the content is way more important.

Yeah, I think the Zoom is definitely better than the phone or like it’s maybe as good as the phone and a good microphone maybe.

But I think I also think it’s sort of gives you some reassurance.

It’s on a device and that kind of thing.

So on a separate device, we had our phones as backup, we brought microphones for our phones as backup, but that’s what we ended up using.

As a matter of interest, what did you find not super accessible about the Zoom?

It doesn’t read file names.

So you have to get them either into your files app on your phone or on your computer to see which file it is.

If you don’t clear the memory card before you start a new job, you’re like trawling through file names with random dates because you can’t set your own date and time on your recorder.

So they’re all just like names that don’t mean anything.

Yeah.

And the process actually for connecting it to your phone is not totally accessible because you have to, a message flashes up that you have to like take out the USB and then put it back in.

So there are just bits that aren’t fully accessible, but it is very, I feel like I know when it’s recording.

And that’s really good, you know?

And also I know, you know, when it turns off, it’s going to sort of save everything up.

So it gives me a bit more confidence.

It’s not just perfect, but I think that I would imagine if enough blind people use it and feed back, that they’ll actually do a bit more work on it as well.

Yeah, I mean, those sound like things, I mean, I’m not a programmer, but they sound like things that probably could be fixed with a firmware update or something like that.

No idea.

Fingers crossed anyway.

Yeah.

So you mentioned, so we’ve got a question now from Felix again, asking what software is that you use for producing podcasts, including any plugins or anything.

So you said Soundforge.

Well, I mean, I use Soundforge.

I use an old version of Soundforge that I shouldn’t be using because it’s really old.

So I’m stuck in the dark ages.

It works perfectly well for me.

I’m a whizzy single track editor, but multi-track I’ve never really got my head around that well.

So it works absolutely fine for me for what I need to do.

But I’m very aware that I should learn something else in case it literally stops working.

BBC Machine is just different to every other podcaster.

You know, it’s a huge, I call it BBC Machine.

It’s not actually called that.

I don’t know.

You know, it’s just this huge juggernaut, you know?

And so people use various editors to edit the audio, but then it all goes into a system and gets mixed.

And then it all gets uploaded into a different system, which I know all about, but there’s no point in telling you, because it’s not relevant to anybody else, you know?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Is there a consensus on what most people use in terms of a piece of software?

Are a lot of people using Reaper now?

Or is it everyone’s very split?

For blind people or for everybody?

For everyone, really.

Oh, well, we have, again, we have internal editors.

So we have like Stady and stuff like that.

Whereas, but what I’ve found is a lot of blind people are now using Reaper.

But then, you know, the person who wrote the Reaper course that I didn’t do, that I signed up for and didn’t do, now use the Soundforge a lot of the time again.

So it’s, I mean, what do you use, Jay?

What do people, you know, what do you plan to use?

I use Pro Tools most of the time, because I’m more in the kind of music world.

Yeah, that is, I guess it’s been for a while, the kind of industry standard in inverted commas.

Yeah.

And it serves me pretty well.

It’s what I’m used to in the same way that you’re used to Soundforge.

Yeah, I mean, people use, yeah, people use Audacity and all sorts, you know, whatever, if you need a free editor, there are free usable editors.

It’s just not my area.

Like I just, I just want to get the audio sorted.

I’d love to be able to make a rich audio program, but I feel like I’d need to go on some sort of four week course to be able to do that.

And I’m busy.

And again, I think that’s useful insight though, in that, you know, you can work at the BBC, be a producer and not feel like you need to know every single technical skill and, you know, be able to do every hard process.

ideally, you would.

But like, you know, this is the other thing that I’ve learned with age, is that actually, sometimes when you’re disabled and you’re in a job, you can’t do all the things in the job, you know, and you, and often it’s very, very tempting to try and do everything when actually you could be making, adding an awful lot more value and feeling a lot better about yourself and getting a lot more work done by doing what you’re best at and what you’re able to do.

I mean, it’s easy for me to say now that I’m, I am presenter, but it is just something to bear in mind that if there is a case for saying, I can’t do this, but I can do this other thing really well.

So if another colleague does that, I will bash through this and you’ll have a really good product really quickly.

Great.

Yeah, I think that’s, that’s really great to bear in mind.

So you mentioned it just now, recording on location.

You’ve just, just been to the Paralympics.

I guess, how was that?

How did you find the experience?

It was, it was fantastic.

I did bring a support person with me.

It was long days and in totally unfamiliar places.

And I did have a producer with me as well, but we had a lot of work to do.

So I did bring someone with me.

So I didn’t worry.

I asked her to plan all the routes and, and things like that.

But it’s great getting out and about.

You know, our podcast is mostly in the studio and it’s, that’s the type of podcast it is.

It’s, you know, we interview people in this nice, whizzy studio and we make videos with it.

We push it out through the BBC and it works really well for us.

So I don’t actually go on location very much at all.

I got to do the show in front of the audience at Edinburgh and then I got to go to the Paralympics just now.

So that’s been a really big thrill to get out and about and to speak to people and speak to some of the Paralympians and find it out.

You know, as I said on the episodes, you know, I’m not here for the sports.

I’m here for the drama.

You know, so it was more of the kind of behind the scenes stuff and the bit of gossip and that kind of thing.

So it was a really good experience, really, really, really good.

We got to go into the Athletes Village because we went to visit Ottobock, which is the service that fixes all of the prosthetics, the wheelchairs and the walking sticks and all this kind of stuff.

And it was like a big, it’s kind of a mixture between inside the Factory and Santa’s Workshop.

It’s just extraordinary.

750 meters of workshop and they take it all from Germany in three big electric trucks and bring it over and they fix everything.

They don’t just fix an athlete’s running blade.

They’ll also fix their day-to-day prosthetic if that needs fixing as well.

Wow.

Yeah, awesome.

That’s crazy.

I mean, that’s great.

That’s great.

I mean, what an experience.

What an experience, honestly, and the sounds and the smells and the passion of all the prosthetists and the people that was welding going on.

There was 3D printing.

I felt a running blade.

You know, when you hear about like Johnny Peacock and all these people running on blades, you don’t really, if you can’t see it, like it’s really hard to have any insight into what they look like.

You know, because you think of a leg and you think of a blade and it’s neither of those.

You know, it’s sort of a bendy, an S-shape yoke.

But it’s, you know, I would never have known what that felt like.

So that was really very, very cool.

That’s awesome.

That’s great.

So last question in this section, Katie is asking, do you feel like it’s possible for someone who’s blind to record and produce podcasts and do the whole process?

Or is it wise to kind of call on the support that’s available for some of the bits?

I mean, we know, we know people who do this.

You guys do it, you know, it’s you get it.

Absolutely can be done.

I’ve never done it.

I it’s not, you know, it’s again, it’s not really a question for me.

But yes, blind people, you know, there’s the Braille cast, there’s lots of blindness focused and led podcasts made by blind people and uploaded by blind people.

You know, Jonathan Mosin is a great resource in New Zealand, who does a lot of podcasting.

Dave Williams, who I believe is often involved in your Sound Without Sight.

So, do you know, there are people who know the whole process of that, and maybe you should get one of them on, because it’s not my, you know, it’s not something I’ve really done.

Yeah, I totally agree though, by the way.

Yeah, if it’s something that you’re interested in doing, obviously there’s quite a lot too, there’s quite a lot of different skills involved in doing the whole thing, but absolutely they can all be done by someone who’s blind.

Yeah, and the biggest thing is actually getting your podcast out there anyway, which you’re perfectly able to do.

Get it out on your Twitter, X, on your Instagram, your Facebook, your LinkedIn, send it to the right people, hock it, basically, that’s your main.

I think people don’t quite realize that that’s actually your main job, is to push it out there.

That’s how you get your listeners.

There are various different theories and they change all the time about how many to do, how long for them to be, what day to put them out.

So just read, go on to LinkedIn and follow all these people who make podcasts blind and sighted and just listen to what they’re saying and learn from it.

Absolutely.

Great advice.

So the last question from me in the main part of the Q&A, it’s all around accessibility awareness and representation in, I guess, mainstream programs, particularly BBC.

It’s great to hear that you’ve done stuff that’s not just Access All, you know, stuff with 5 Live Drive and the climate question and people fixing the world.

And I think you’re on the BBC News channel around the election as well.

How important is it for you to kind of propagate access awareness and just have yourself represented outside of a disability-led space?

Well, I mean, it’s good for my career, right?

So the more places I can be, the better it is for my future.

You know, and getting known.

Because as a presenter, you’re kind of a brand, but you are, you know?

So you need to get, you kind of need to get yourself known.

So that’s one thing.

And then another thing is I am like a political correspondent, but for disability.

So disability is just what I, it’s what I know a lot about.

So I talk about disability because that is what I know a lot about.

And that’s what I’ve spent 20 years building up.

But it was really, really nice to present a podcast.

So I presented an episode of The Climate Question, which was nothing to do with disability.

That’s very rare for me, but I loved it because it just was, I was more anonymous and it was more, I suppose I proved to myself and everyone else that I was interested in other stuff, you know, and, and, and approved to the bosses and to the other editors that I can present anything.

So it’s very easy to get pigeonholed.

And I don’t mind being pigeonholed because that’s my expertise.

But I do love to go out and do other stuff.

And I would love eventually to just be a presenter on like a BBC radio program.

That would be fine for me, you know, it would be, but this is just happens to be my expertise.

There’s no, it’s just the way I went in, you know, it’s just my journey, how I ended up here.

So that’s why I talk about disability a lot.

And I think it’s good to have a blind person, a disabled person visibly or invisibly on TV and radio talking about disability and talking about other stuff.

And yeah, like around the election, really good to talk about blindness and voting and disabled people and voting and whether there are enough disabled politicians and ask what disabled people want us to ask them.

You know, we put a call out and we got hundreds of responses, you know, but put them on the spot.

How many disabled people do you have running for election?

Like that felt like a really important thing.

Like we did loads of local radio stations, etc.

So all representation is good.

I think most of us won’t talk about blindness and disability.

It’s just the way it happened for me.

Yeah.

Yeah.

No, I think it’s something that I wrestle with.

And I think probably a lot of people do like once you are doing this stuff for real, you kind of feel a little bit of pressure to be a kind of advocate in a way.

And there’s always a balance between, I guess, just doing what you absolutely love and I guess finding out a bit more about yourself as well.

And then through that disability focus work.

Yeah.

I think there’s sometimes there’s an argument for making yourself the story or putting yourself in the story.

Like I do the thing about blind women doing their hair.

And then if you look at Gary O’Donoghue, when he did the Trump, he was the main reporter when Trump was shot on BBC News Channel.

And he talked about it afterwards.

They made an amazing video for Instagram because he was on the media show on Radio 4.

He talked about how being a blind person fed into that and how actually there were some benefits, you know, not judging people, you know, touching people on the arm and them not like giving them a slap, etc, etc.

So, you know, that was really, really, really, really strong and interesting because he almost never makes himself the story.

And I don’t often make myself, I mean, I often talk about myself, but I don’t, I’m not usually the story, and sometimes I am, and that’s okay.

And I think, again, it’s kind of knowledge and confidence as to when you are comfortable being the story and when you’re not.

Yeah, I think that’s, yeah, again, really, really good advice.

And I think, yeah, that piece that Gary did was so good.

That clip, I saw it, and it’s really kind of evocative and just really well described.

Yeah.

Yeah, I’d love to get Gary to fall on these events at some point.

So yeah, maybe we can make that happen.

So that’s the end of the questions we had submitted in advance.

We’ve got one hand up from Matthew, which we’ll go to in a sec, and I think we’ve probably got a couple of questions in the chat as well.

Yeah, we do.

Cool.

So if we go to Matthew first, I’m just going to unmute you.

Hello.

This has been a wonderful session.

Thank you very much for it, and thank you for plugging Braillecast.

However inadvertently, yeah, really, really appreciate that.

Love to talk to you offline at some point about these Zoom recorders because I have one of those little H1, those little Zoom H1 essentials, and I have managed to set the date and time properly on mine.

So I don’t know whether, well, yeah, yeah.

So I don’t know whether it’s that my firmware is out of date and a new firmware has broken it, or whether there’s been a patch update at some point that-

Oh, no Matthew, it’s just that I can’t use it.

Don’t worry.

I’m sure it is doable.

I thought it wasn’t doable, but I stand corrected.

Well, I’ll look into it and just see what’s actually happened because yes, it’s likely that there’s been a firmware update or something that’s either fixed it or broken it.

So it’d be interesting to get to the bottom of that.

But yeah, certainly it used to be possible if it’s not now.

But what I wanted to ask really, and I’ll ask it in a Braillecast question since you pointed it out, I think we might have already covered it really, but I edit Braillecast and I do it with Reaper and I do it on Windows and I use JAWS and that’s a workflow that I’m very comfortable with.

What I find is that when you apply for a lot of office jobs, you’ll get told, you’ll be told, right, this job we use Microsoft Office and like it or not, you’ve got to use Microsoft Office, otherwise you’re not really going to fit into this organization.

Or you’ve got to use Google Docs or whatever the software is, you’re told the software that you use and you just have to fit in.

And so it’s always kind of put me off applying for audio work because I’ve always felt that, well, I’m quite happy in my little DAW and I don’t want to be told that I have to learn another one.

And you’re sort of saying, well, actually you’re using an old version of SoundForge, which suggests that you might actually have a fair bit of influence over what software is being used.

So I’m wondering whether that’s the case, if anybody at any stage of the BBC was to apply, does everybody have that level of influence or is that just because you’ve been working there for 20 years and know the right people?

So it’s a combination of things.

I don’t feel like I have very much influence.

I know the guy who helps set up the assistive technology on the laptops and I beg him every time to put my old start version Sound Forge on.

I think there have been various levels of accessibility in the internal audio editing software in the BBC over the years.

I think that has meant that sometimes it’s really easy to come in and be on the front foot and go straight in and use the editors that are available.

Sometimes you cannot.

If they want you to edit, you have to use what works for you.

I think the thing with the internal audio software is that it links in them with the big databases where you put the stuff.

But I feel like it’s something that could be overcome.

If someone wanted to use something like Reaper, I think that would be doable.

Also, I think if you want to use a mixture of Reaper and or whatever you’re using and the internal stuff, that would work as well.

I don’t feel like in a lot of roles, unless you’re doing really rich audio and or you’re doing really quick turnarounds, maybe where people have to just grab it from you all the time, I think otherwise you would probably get away with using whatever works best for you.

I don’t know, that’s a bit of a rubbish answer.

Well, it’s helpful insofar as if I turn up in a job interview, they’re not likely to say, right, so you’ve got lots of experience using this software, right?

And it’s helpful to know that I wouldn’t necessarily have to face that question.

Thanks for answering the questions, that’s really helpful.

No worries, no worries.

Cool, so I can see, so Patrick has just put his hand up.

I was wondering maybe before we go to the hands, if we go to the questions that have been in the chat for a while, and Sydney, could you lead us through those, if that’s okay?

Yes, just looking over the questions.

We have a question from Georgie Radcliffe Frost.

I would really like to make my own music and podcasts.

Can you give me advice on what to do about it, please?

I think do your research, figure out what free stuff you can download that’s going to work for you accessible wise.

You know, read Sound Without Sight, read, you know, Brian Harch and Jonathan Mosin, all these people, figure out what you can use and just try stuff out, really.

That’s, I mean, that’s my advice, but you know, maybe Jay would have better advice.

I think there are resources out there.

If there’s specific advice that you feel like would be useful, then please do reach out, Georgie.

And yeah, I’ll do my best to link you up with some resources.

You can also, if you want to try a specific piece of software, then maybe search for it on the Sound Without Sight website.

There may well be resources listed on there already that could support you to get started.

So Kevin had a question in the chat as well asking, Emma, what tips do you have for improving scripting and making a script sound your own?

Oh, that’s a really good question.

Read it to yourself and read it back again.

And if it doesn’t sound natural, try again, look at it again.

Not too many words.

Don’t make it too wordy.

It depends.

I mean, I suppose our podcast is maybe more 5 Live style than Radio 4 or 3, which you might get away with being more wordy.

But my preference is the kind of chatty, personal style.

And that’s the way the podcast is.

So I think it’s hear yourself saying it before you say it.

It’s like preparing for a job interview or something.

Make sure that what you say makes sense and sounds right in your own ears.

And that really helps.

So if you’re writing a script for yourself, that’s a good idea.

I think if you’re writing it for someone else, I think give them all the base information, tell them the style and let them put their own voice in.

If you don’t know what their own voice would be.

Is that helpful?

Yeah, it’s really helpful.

Thanks, Emma.

You know, one of the things I find is that when I’m reading information and then I have to sort of report it back, I’m always forgetting what I just read.

Totally.

Absolutely.

But you know what?

Nobody wants to hear a massive heap of stuff anyway, you know, in a row.

Pick your one or two main numbers and make it sound human.

So say, you know, nearly 60% or, do you know, the person who’s listening to you is probably like in the gym or in the car or washing the dishes or, or do they’re usually not sitting there listening to you and doing nothing else.

So you need, it needs to be something that’s going to go in without the listener needing to make too much of an effort.

Yeah, it’s getting the facts, but making it simple and easy to understand, isn’t it?

Yeah.

And that’s prep, to be honest.

You know, that’s like making sure you understand them.

You know, we will often talk to the Office of National Statistics.

We will ring them and talk through it because we make sure we, and then there’s a guy in BBC who’s like our stats ninja, who you would take a thing and say, is this worth talking about?

You know, is this a good, is this, is this really healthy and is this like a really fully watertight stat?

So, you know, it’s, it’s about knowing it inside out, I think.

And I know that’s a lot of prep and loads of presenters, or plenty of presenters will just walk in and read something.

And great for them.

I can’t do that.

So, which might mean I can do less hours in a week of actual physically presenting, but that’s okay with me, I think.

Yeah, thank you very much.

I obviously came into the BBC a couple of years ago, as well as a trainee.

And I think my experience has been that I have learned a little bit of some of the technology, some of it’s not being very accessible, but what the BBC has been really great at, I think, is they’ve got really good support workers.

So, I can do my own independent editing, bits of software that I can’t access.

I’ve worked with support workers.

And I don’t know if your experience has been similar, Emma, but from my point of view, I think people have tried really hard to make sure that it’s been an accessible space.

Yeah, so that’s exactly right.

So, that’s what I was saying to Matthew, and that’s what you’re saying, is that you’re not going to be expected to use something that’s inaccessible because it’s not going to work for you.

But they’ll accommodate you in some way.

Yeah.

But that’s interesting actually about support workers as well, because I think the old idea of a support worker was that they would be a kind of a caring sort of a person, and someone who’s really good at taking you around and getting your lunch and all that kind of stuff.

Whereas actually, often for us, it’s someone who’s got a real interest in media, and is quite a bit techy, and is willing to learn.

That has ended up being the kind of person that you need by your side when you’re faced with an inaccessible mountain.

Absolutely.

Really good insight.

Thank you very much.

So we’ve just got two hands up.

I’m going to go to Patrick Hennessey first, and then Jessica Beale after that.

So Patrick, you should be able to unmute now.

Yeah, thanks very much.

Really appreciate it.

And, you know, really fun to talk for insights.

So thanks so much for that.

So I’m in a position where I’m looking for a very simple position to yourself.

I’m looking to move from rural Ireland to the UK.

I work at the moment part-time in commercial radio, but I kind of face the same problem as you kind of mentioned earlier.

I don’t know how to use a mixing desk.

I send in a VT, a voice track of interviews and links, you know, each week, and it gets sorted out for me or whatever.

Is the system similar to how it was when you first started in the BBC?

Are they still supportive in the search for support workers and people to kind of assist in things like desk management, which aren’t accessible?

Is that still a thing or do you think that things have changed over the years?

I think a lot of presenters in the BBC don’t actually do desk management.

I think a lot of reporters use their phones or small recorders and their computers to suck it in and edit it.

So I think using a desk, I think as a presenter or reporter, you’re less likely to need to use a desk.

You know, in Radio 1 and stuff, they have a set of buttons that they press and like six music and the music radio stations.

But the kind of talk ones generally have a studio manager or it’s pre-recorded.

And we have, you know, like sound engineer, studio manager time to sort that out.

I think in terms of support workers, I think you won’t get a support worker who is a sound engineer, you’ll get a support worker who is like, has a basic, is a support worker.

And then you shape them to what you need them to be.

So it’s like, you will then say, so you get, so the good access to work, it’s a government scheme where they help you with the extra cost of being disabled at work.

And they will give you money.

And then, but the BBC has a team, a contracted out company that provides a team of access workers.

But then you can employ your own as well if you want.

But it’s not, that’s not the answer to desk management, if that makes sense.

So you might have…

I understand what you’re saying.

Yeah, yeah.

But I suppose I’m just talking about, I suppose for what I’m talking about, I suppose I can edit audio.

So I suppose when I say desk management, I’m talking about a fader up, a fader down.

Do you follow me?

It’s literally a case of…

It’s mixing.

So you need to be, what you want to do is be, are you thinking about live radio?

Or are you thinking about when making a package?

Either one.

I suppose live radio is more so.

Okay, so live radio, I don’t have any experience in really.

Making a package, you probably need to, if you’re not, if not already, you’d probably be useful for you to get your head around a multi-track editor, where you can do these fades, where you can do these fades within the software.

Yeah, absolutely.

But live radio is not something I have done a lot of.

And if I have done, if I have been on the radio live, it’s been as a reporter, so I’ve not had to do what you’re asking about.

But I don’t really think anyone does really in BBC.

Okay.

Okay.

Thanks so much.

I really appreciate that.

Oh, I don’t know if that was helpful.

No, absolutely.

No, 100 percent.

No, it’s great.

And obviously get in touch again with me if you’d like to.

I would.

Yeah, absolutely.

No, I will indeed.

Thank you.

No worries.

Awesome.

Thank you for that.

So final hand up from Jessica Beale.

I’m just going to unmute you, Jessica.

Hello.

Hi.

Hi there.

Hi, Emma.

It’s been so interesting.

Thank you so much so far.

I have a question.

It’s like right back at the beginning and basic stuff.

So I haven’t been blind all my life.

And yes, I haven’t done loads and loads of recording stuff.

And I’m in my forties and have sort of been thinking recently about, you know, maybe some sort of career change and have been thinking about some sort of podcasty presentity radio type thing.

And I started looking, you know, just online for some sort of evening courses, a way to get in.

I wasn’t really sure if that was a good way, if I should do like a general course or if you should be more specializing and then for a course, you know, what sort of just like adjustments you should ask, would you be able to do it like on your own?

Would you need someone with you or is it the software?

Sorry, this is a lot of questions in one, but just like some general advice about getting started, I suppose.

If you want to be a presenter, start presenting.

So do find like an online radio station or look at RNIB Connect, see if they are looking for people, find a way of starting to present if that’s what you want to do.

And then the second thing is have a great podcast.

You can go with that.

Yeah, so that would well, it would depend.

I mean, the next thing I was going to say is think of your idea and find and test it out on people of what your idea for a podcast is and figure out what that is.

And then go from there, I think, in terms of what we, because your podcast could just be you talking into a microphone and then uploading it, or it could be 17 different voices and music and sounds.

And do you know, it depends on what you want to do.

And then look at how you go by doing that.

That’s what I would do, but I don’t, I don’t know, maybe Jace is better response.

Well, what I’m actually going to do is, is just open up the room so that everyone can now unmute.

And then if anyone else has any particular advice around getting started, you should be able to unmute now if you want to jump in.

Hi, I’m happy to, I mean, there’s a lot that I could say, and I don’t want to say too much and take the opportunity away from anybody else.

But there’s one website in particular that I would flag.

It’s probably not going to teach you the actual skills that you need, but it will certainly give you a good grounding in what skills you need and how to go about it.

And that is schoolofpodcasting.com.

He does have a paid school of podcasting.com.

I’ve never done it.

I don’t know whether it’s any good or not.

But his name is Dave Jackson, and he does a podcast about podcasting and how to get started with podcasting and what you need to do and what you need to think about.

And he’s a sighted guy, so I think at some point you’ll need to come back into the community and get some community-specific resources.

But just as a thing in terms of, I want to think about this, and I want to know what to think about, and what direction to take.

He’s a very engaging presenter and would definitely be worth a listen.

Okay, cool.

Thank you.

Okay.

Thank you.

I recommend a podcast called Sound School Podcast.

Sound School Podcast, okay.

Because that’s really good because he basically, what he usually does is he will take a bit of audio that he has heard on the radio, and then kind of breaks it down and goes, okay, this is why this works.

This is what is great about the way this reporter has done the story, or this is really great about the sound that they’ve used.

So after you’ve kind of got basics and then you really want to start thinking about crafting, it just gives you so many different ideas of where you can get stories, how you can get stories to sound really fun and interesting.

And it’s a podcast that comes out every couple of weeks.

So do you think it’s better to just listen to these like online stuff and learn from that rather than to actually go to somewhere and do a course?

No, I think these are just suggestions.

I’ve done all of it.

Like I did a course years ago.

But there’s, you know, I think there’s a lot to be said for just doing something because I’m always guilty of trying to learn too much and then not actually do anything.

And actually sometimes you learn much quicker by trying things out.

But if you want to do a course, like look them up.

It’s just because I’m a procrastinator.

So I thought if I was doing a course and I’m excited.

Don’t worry.

I know exactly where you’re coming from.

This is exactly what I was like for a long time before I went to get into radio.

I took every course going and was like, I can’t do this.

But actually, I think when you’re, when you start doing it and you’re throwing it in the deep end, you end up surprising yourself actually about what you already know and what you can do.

And listen to lots and lots of podcasts.

Yeah.

If you want to be a podcaster, know what’s out there already.

There’s no point in making something that someone else has already made.

And are these courses online?

The courses I’ve been looking at have been going to different colleges.

They know they’ve been actually at places.

But then when I saw it and I was like, oh, I don’t know if I’d be able to, I don’t know what equipment that means because it’s all, all new.

So I just, yeah, it’s all beginning stuff.

So it’s all like, well, if I signed up to that, would I even be able to keep up with it?

I don’t know if they still do them.

I did a course with the Press Association a few years ago, and it was run by ex BBC or BBC journalists.

And it was, it was, it was really good.

It was like a six-week crash course on radio and journalism.

And they bring you through phases, but there’s lots of stuff.

It was, I’ve visited it, and then there’s Morley College, that was just like a one-day thing.

And I thought, well, maybe if it’s just one day, I can crash course.

I think you need a bit of time, actually.

I feel like the benefit of doing something online rather than a structured course where you’re going into college is you can take it totally at your own pace.

I think what I would like to do, so Dave Williams and I, so we presented a very initial introduction to podcasting recently, and there were some resources that came out of that, that it sounds like it could be useful for the position that you’re in potentially.

So I’ll make it a priority to get those online.

Dave, I can see you’ve just joined.

I’m just talking about the session that we did, and the resources that came out of that.

And I would love to get those online as a kind of starting point for people who are quite new to podcasting.

Yeah, this was for Tavip.

I did a session back in, I want to say May, which is posted on their website, but absolutely we could share that on Sound Without Sight as well.

And there’s a bunch of links in there in terms of devices for recording.

Emma mentioned the H1 Essential.

There is a firmware update that addresses some of the accessibility issues, not all.

Also in that there are details about different softwares that you can use for post-production and editing, and also some suggestions for hosting services where you can publish your podcast as well to get it out on Spotify and the other platforms.

I think what’s really important before you actually start talking about the software, and this is kind of why I was suggesting to Jess to look at things like School of Podcasting and the other suggestion that Kevin had.

I think you need to have an understanding of what it is that you want to do, and why it is that you want to do it.

So it’s no good saying, I might start a podcast or I might produce some music or I might do this.

Actually, what would be really useful is if you had an idea of, I’m going to produce a podcast and it’s going to be about this.

Because then you’ve got a direction and then you’ve got a focus, and then you can decide then, if your podcast is going to be about interviewing people, about their lives, then you know that you need to learn about recording in the context of interviewing people.

So you’re recording more than one person and you need to learn software that can cope with that.

Or you need to record in the same room.

Or if you’re just recording yourself, then you know that you don’t probably need to learn as much and you only need to learn about recording yourself.

So at some point, there will be a course involved.

And I think I do actually think that at some point, doing a course is going to be a really good idea.

But I think having a really strong idea of what you want to get out of the course beyond simply, I want to do a podcast, actually have a fairly firm idea of what you want your podcast to be.

Because then you can structure your learning around that and you’ve got a really clear objective at the end.

As well as that, if you’re going to have more than one person, for example, sometimes there’s different kind of equipment and stuff that you have to learn how to use to manage.

But I honestly, I think if you really want to start a podcast and stuff, I’d recommend writing down some ideas first.

Then also we do have a lot of groups on the Sound Without Sight website that you can join that have other people that are at different levels of recording and audio editing, and maybe not specifically podcast, but I think it would be really helpful if it is something that you’re looking into.

Yeah.

Well, as I said, I’m just beginning the whole exploring of it.

What’s out there, if it’s possible, what I want to do with it.

I don’t know.

I just know I want to do something different to what I’m doing now, I suppose.

Yeah.

It sounds like there’s definitely scope for us to explore this all more in another meetup.

I think this session with Emma has really highlighted the distinction between being a presenter and a producer.

And of course, a lot of people do a little bit of both and it’s important to understand both roles, whichever one you find is your kind of natural fit.

But actually understanding about branding, how to tell a story, intros, outros, teasing, things that are going to come later, how to structure an interview.

They’re all skills, right?

Not to be underestimated.

Anybody can switch on a microphone, right?

And start talking, but to actually make it something that people want to come back to and feel safe listening to and compelled to stay tuned, that is an art.

It is totally an art in itself.

I think you might have got cut off there, Dave.

But yeah, I think we’ve used all the time in this particular session now.

So I just wanted to draw it back to you, Emma, and say thank you very much.

It was so, so interesting and such great insight you were sharing.

And yeah, just thank you so much for joining us tonight.

Oh, thanks for having me.

It’s been really, really interesting to hear everybody’s take, and it’s been really nice to hear all the different voices and lots and lots of people wanting to do podcasts, which is great.

More of the merrier.

Are there any other socials that we can follow you on, just like people sustain?

Yes, I’m at Emma J Tracey on Twitter, X on Instagram, at BBC Access All, I should say, is the podcast social.

So on Instagram and on X, it’s at BBC Access All.

Great.

And if people did want to get in contact, because you said you get contacted for content.

Yeah.

How do people do that?

Well, you can contact us by email on accessallatbbc.co.uk and you can send us a WhatsApp message, 0330 123 9480.

And then please subscribe on BBC Sounds or wherever you get your podcasts from.

Thank you for listening to this episode of the Sound Without Sight podcast.

Sound Without Sight is a community driven online knowledge hub, collating information and resources to support blind and partially sighted musicians and audio engineers to break down access barriers.

If you’re a visually impaired musician or audio engineer, why not share some solutions you’ve found on our knowledge hub?

You can learn more and get involved at soundwithoutsight.org.

If you’ve enjoyed listening to this podcast, please consider making a donation to support the project.

You can do so at soundwithoutsight.org/donate.

The music you’re listening to was kindly contributed by community member Mackie Jones of maplemixproductions.com.