The Ethics of Recasting: Audio Mistrust in The Archers

I have long been an avid listener of BBC Radio 4's epic farming soap opera The Archers. As I said on my post about 'Blindness and/on the Radio', what I love about spoken word radio is the way that it is automatically accessible to blind people. The Archers has to have audio description built into its plot lines so that characters' speech also fills in the details we cannot see: like a film's audio description soundtrack, The Archers' dialogue tells us who characters are with, what they are doing and where they are.
Just as (I imagine) sighted viewers recognise the characters in their favourite television soaps by their appearance, I recognise Archers characters by the sound of their voice. But recently, there has been a spate of re-castings on The Archers which leave me confused, disorientated and more than a little dissatisfied. Whilst television recastings are incredibly rare (Lucy in Neighbours, Miss Ellie in Dallas, and Sam Mitchell in Eastenders are the only examples I can think of in the last 40 years or so), at least four major Archers characters (Clarrie, Hayley, Tony and now Tom) have been recast in recent years.
I know there are always practical reasons for recasting and it is not a decision producers take lightly. But the expectation that listeners will quickly and easily accept a new audio incarnation of a beloved and long-standing character paradoxically undermines the importance of voice to the very medium which depends on it. Helen's effusive repetition of Tom's name is not enough to convince me that this interloper is in fact Tom Archer. Radio listeners - like blind people - know how to identify people by voice. This is a skill built on the assumption that people are who they sound like: radio drama can only function successfully if producers respect this assumption. When the sacred link between voice and character is broken by an unexplained voice change, the listener's trust in audio falters and The Archers loses some of its magic.

Practising Inclusive Access

As I become more involved in Disability Studies as a discipline, I find myself increasingly invited to attend disability-themed events at both my own and other institutions. These range from academic conferences where I present my work and discuss the work of others, to talks for a general audience about issues around disability, and meetings and workshops about improving support for both disabled students and staff across the HE sector.

The organisers of such events do a great job of ensuring that they are always wheelchair accessible. But disabled access is about a lot more than wheelchairs. Recently I have found myself in the somewhat paradoxical position of discussing the importance of disability awareness-raising during a number of events which were not fully accessible to me. Powerpoints are almost always used, but I rarely encounter a speaker who takes the time to describe the images on the screen. Handouts are often circulated but unless they have been sent round in advance, I am unable to access the information they contain.

Practising inclusive access is not as onerous as it sounds. In fact many of the suggestions I list below are incredibly easy to incorporate:

• Offer large-print handouts a well as (or instead of) standard size ones.
• Circulate ALL materials (including powerpoints) in advance, electronically if possible. If you must table last-minute documents, offer to e-mail them to attendees on the spot and always circulate them after the meeting.
• Present at a comfortable pace 
• If you incorporate Powerpoint slides into your presentation / meeting: 
• use a high contrast colour scheme (i.e. white background, black font or the reverse)
• use a templated slide format
• use a sans-serif font, such as Arial, and maintain a large font size
• provide minimal text on each slide (only a few points)
• incorporate audio description of all images, graphs, charts on your slides
• Introduce yourself by name every time you speak, especially when several people are involved in a discussion. 
• Encourage others to do the same: during questions, ask audience members to introduce themselves as well; consider asking everyone in the room to say who they are at the beginning of a meeting.
• Use neutral (or positive) language rather than negative language: for example, say ‘wheelchair user’ or ‘wheelchair rider’ rather than ‘wheelchair-bound’; say ‘non-disabled’ rather than ‘normal’ or ‘able-bodied’; avoid formulations like ‘suffers from’.

These simple measures will make many events more accessible to a whole range of attendees. Practising inclusive access is easy once we know how: convincing (and then reminding) people to keep on doing it is the tricky part.