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 | You and Yours - Transcript 91Èȱ¬ Radio 4 |
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| TX: 15.03.04 – LEADING DESIGNER SAYS DISABILITY EQUIPMENT NEEDS A DESIGN OVERHAUL PRESENTER: PETER WHITE |
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| THE ATTACHED TRANSCRIPT WAS TYPED FROM A RECORDING AND NOT COPIED FROM AN ORIGINAL SCRIPT. BECAUSE OF THE RISK OF MISHEARING AND THE DIFFICULTY IN SOME CASES OF IDENTIFYING INDIVIDUAL SPEAKERS, THE 91Èȱ¬ CANNOT VOUCH FOR ITS COMPLETE ACCURACY. WHITE Now Daniel Brown is a young up and coming designer, he specialises in innovative web design and also for bands and fashion labels and he's just been shortlisted for the Designer of the Year Award. Last May Daniel was involved in a swimming accident that left him paralysed from the shoulders down. After almost a year of rehabilitation Daniel was discharged from hospital just two weeks ago but to his horror this Prada wearing, fashion conscious, young designer found that every piece of equipment and gadget with which he was expected to carry on with his life was not just functional but often plain ugly. Daniel now thinks that disability needs a complete design overhaul. We went to meet him in his minimalist studio apartment. MUSIC BROWN I basically from a few years ago have been working as a web designer and from there I started doing these more experimental projects, these artistic things. This particular piece is for Warp Records LFO website. I was doing very well until about a year ago and then one day in Barcelona I decided to take a nice swim in the sea and somehow managed - had a fight with a wave and the next thing I knew I was kind of being put in an ambulance and was found to have a broken neck. The portrayal of disabled people in the media is not what I'd call a particularly pleasant image and I don't see any reason why it should be portrayed that way. I mean particularly with spinal injuries you have somebody who's - apart from their paralysis - is a normal, intelligent human being and they have the right and desire to be interested in fashion, just like anyone else and it did surprise me, going through that rehabilitation programme, how much design was overlooked and the choices that we were given about particular pieces of equipment didn't seem to bear in mind esthetical issues. MUSIC When you're looking to see what kind of wheelchair you need when you are going to leave the hospital I remember being shown one type of wheelchair and the first thing I remarked was that it was purple and it's really not a nice colour. And the way I see it is the same way we all make big decisions about the running shoes that we might wear, so very important thing to a young person kind of what running shoes, trainers, they wear and to me it was just as an important issue what my wheelchair looked like. The other example is there's obviously quite a lot of adaptive furniture around the apartment - my bed - now if you take my bedroom it's kind of all white and it's kind of deliberately minimal and this bed, which was chosen for me, is beige with a wood effect on it and it stands out a mile. You have to look at it in terms of perspective - there are actually very few disabled people in the country and of course any industry which caters for disabled people is therefore a kind of niche industry and a cottage industry. I can't help but feel that the smaller companies haven't really yet managed to look at the modern way of thinking with regards branding and fashion and colour. MUSIC I like the fact that the advertising on one of the beds that I was looking at actually considered it a feature that it was beige, so it kept it clean rather than white and you can't help but think this is aimed at a nursing home but with most people with these types of injuries they're going to be going to their own homes, so of course they're going to want something that fits in with their own aesthetics and décor. MUSIC WHITE A deeply dissatisfied Daniel Brown. Well joining me from Leeds is Roger Tasker, who's chief executive of Medicare Technology, which as well as beds and wheelchairs produces a whole range of other equipment for disabled people. Roger Tasker, I mean we've heard this accusation before, it's just very powerful coming from someone newly exposed to it, what's the reason for this - is this economics or just a failure of imagination? TASKER Well I think if you look at wheelchair design fundamentally the thing that affects the design most is the fact they have to comply with very stringent laws. The C marking and the classification of wheelchairs as medical devices means the first things you have to do when you design and develop a product is observe the laws relevant to it. WHITE But that doesn't influence things like colour does it Roger, I mean that wouldn't have anything to do with safety at all. TASKER Well colour, you'd be quite surprised the colours that are available on wheelchairs. The big issue is that it depends where you choose to go and buy your wheelchair from. If you rely on the NHS as a resource for wheelchairs then because they have such a large volume demand to cope with they tend to offer standard designs out to most people. Whereas if you go to the private sector and buy from retailers, of which there's about a thousand around the UK, they then have a broader selection. However, colour choice and options means they tend to be very much - very costly in comparison to basic standard NHS wheelchairs. WHITE But I mean surely because colour wouldn't be that difficult a thing to change couldn't the NHS be more imaginative with its ordering without particularly raising the cost? TASKER Well I think if you look at the NHS it has something like three quarters of a million wheelchairs out in circulation, the last thing that they want is to then have to colour code spares and carry an inventory of spares that would quadruple the amount of stockholding they'd have to carry. I think we as a manu - sorry … WHITE I was just wondering how much hope we could give to Daniel. There he is, he's Designer of the Year, he's come into this new bland beige world, what - are there things that he could be more optimistic about? TASKER Well I think we at the moment supply 99% of the products that we produce through retailers, about 1% goes into the NHS system. There's a new contract out on April 1st where the NHS have actually opened out to more options on that contract. So instead of actually just having a basic category they've split that category down. So hopefully there will be more choice available. WHITE So that will mean even if you don't - can't afford maybe the couple of grand that you need for a really smart one it might be possible to get a reasonably good one in the future? TASKER Well absolutely, we have, at the moment, on the drawing board a new active wheelchair that will be round about the £600 price mark which really will provide Daniel the sort of active lifestyle ability that he needs but obviously making it a lot more affordable and at the same time making it quite funky. WHITE Roger Tasker than you very much indeed. Back to the You and Yours homepage The 91Èȱ¬ is not responsible for external websites |
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