Disability in Fiction: Astra

Astra by Naomi Foyle (Jo Fletcher Books, 2014)

Astra by Naomi Foyle is a beguiling and absorbing sci-fi/fantasy novel set in a post-apocalyptic eco-utopia. It tells the compelling story of what happens when a young girl's inquisitiveness, bravery and innocence collide with an adult world of distrust, manipulation and secrecy.It also happens to be an uplifting celebration of bodily diversity and an illustration of the 'social model' of disability in action.

Astra is full of characters with what our society might call 'imperfect' or 'incomplete' bodies. One of Astra's shelter mothers, Hokma, is missing an eye, Astra's shelter father Klor has a prosthetic leg and her primary school teacher uses a wheelchair. But in Is-Land none of these characters are disabled. The hi-tech yet resolutely natural world in which they live is perfectly  accessible to all of them because it has been created with bodily difference at its core. Many of the features which Foyle has invented for her fictional world could be usefully deployed in our real one to make homes, offices, gardens and information technology more welcoming spaces for all the people who use them.

The character of Hokma is particularly interesting. Although she is offered a prosthetic eye after her injury, she prefers to wear an eye patch. Like my teenage self, she refuses to hide her 'impairment' so instead she celebrates it by wearing a variety of beautifully hand-made patches which she co-ordinates with her moods. Hokma is one of the book's pivotal characters. She is powerful, brave and intelligent. Beyond reference to her eye patches, her half-blindness is barely mentioned. This is not because she is ashamed of it. Nor is it because others find it difficult to talk about. It is because blindness is not a tragedy in Is-Land. It is a bodily difference like any other, neither negative nor positive, just there. 

Hokma is clever enough to know that not everyone sees her blindness as a simple fact. Her sinister brother is so unenlightened that he still sees her missing eye as a tragedy, something he should feel guilty about. Hokma has no qualms about using his misguided feelings against him: when she needs his help she uses references to her damaged sight to manipulate him. She is wise enough to know that disability can be used as a kind of emotional blackmail against those too weak or stupid to truly see it for what it is.

It is no coincidence that, like Hokma's brother, the book's other evil characters are those most wedded to the controversial 'medical model' of disability. The shadowy government who controls Is-Land is using a kind of high-level genetic re-coding to rid the country of birth defects of all kinds. This is a sinister and malevolent move which has echoes of both Third Reich eugenics and more recent kinds of ethic cleansing. But what I find most fascinating about this extraordinary book is the way that all the 'good' characters, including Astra and Hokma, share a refreshingly enlightened approach to bodily difference. It is as if Foyle has used her characters' attitude to disability as an indication of their importance, a kind of code which tells us which characters we can trust and which we should despise.

Audio Description (3): Even better for Action

Katniss looks towars two other tributes at the start of the 75th Hunger Games.

I had my first audio description experience around 18 months ago and - as this post shows - I was absolutely blown away by it. Since then I've had a couple of disappointing experiences where the AD didn't work: as it only starts at the beginning of the film it is always too late to fix it if you don't want to miss the beginning. After a very helpful email exchange with Odeon, we have realised that AD works best in certain, quite specific, parts of the auditorium. Last night, when I picked up my AD headset, the usher was enormously helpful. He accompanied me to the auditorium, showed me where I should sit for best coverage and came back at the start of the film to check everything was working. I am so glad I persevered with AD and didn't just give up: if I hadn't got in touch with the cinema and asked them to find out which seats have optimum coverage I wouldn't have had such an amazing cinematic experience last night

I already knew that AD works brilliantly for costume dramas but last night I discovered that it is also a fantastic addition to fast-paced action films. Because it is set in a futuristic and imaginary world, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire is full of objects, people and settings which are unfamiliar and therefore difficult to guess at. When I use my eyes to interact with the world I rely mainly on context to tell me what things are. If I see a dark, circular shape on my son's bed, I am pretty sure it is either our cat or his folded up dressing gown. But if I saw the same shape lying on, say, the floor of my office at work, I would have absolutely no idea what it was until I touched it. The AD in The Hunger Games told me about all kinds of key plot-related objects - such as brooches, bracelets, lockets, axes and red-tinged drinks - whose significance I would otherwise not have understood.

I knew that AD would also be incredibly helpful for identifying the various tributes. As they were all wearing the same uniform during training and in the arena, it was impossible for me to tell them apart. And when the dead tributes were projected into the night sky, my describer helpfully told me their names and districts. (I have it on good authority that sighted viewers did not always have access to this information). But I was surprised to find that AD really comes into its own during fight scenes. The speed and darkness usually associated with such scenes make them impossible for me to follow. I tend to sit back and enjoy the general atmosphere knowing that the outcome of the fight will become clear at some point. With AD I was completely immersed in the action, utterly captivated and more involved in a film than I have ever been. It makes we want to re-watch every single film I have ever seen to fill in all the gaps I now know there must be.

 It is hard to describe the effect AD has on my film-going experience but I suspect it might be compared to the addition of 3-D. For obvious reasons I have no idea what the appeal of 3-D is, but I imagine that it gives the sighted viewer the kind of ultra-intense cinema experience that AD gives me. AD is neither intrusive nor unwieldy. It is an art form in its own right, an enhancement, an amelioration. It becomes part of the film itself, enhancing the action like a good football commentary might. It more than doubles the pleasure I get from a film. My only regret is that it does not also exist in real life.

Smart Glasses: Science Fiction becomes Fact

The 'bionic glasses'

Much as I love my white cane, it does not always keep me safe. It helps me avoid pavement-level obstacles like bollards and kerbs but it is not so good at detecting overhanging branches, open windows or head-level signs. In fact I always seem to have a bruise or a bump somewhere on the upper half of my body from an annoying or painful collision with an unexpected object of some kind.

Last week I took part in some fascinating research which might well put an end to these injuries. Dr Stephen Hicks and his team at the University of Oxford Department of Clincial Neuroscience are developing some 'smart glasses' which use a tiny camera and an LED display to create a live, real-time image of the size, shape and position of solid objects. This would mean that sign-posts, wheelie bins and bus shelters would become completely detectable, even in absolute darkness. (I forgot to ask Stephen whether the glasses would also detect the partially blind person's least favourite objects: mirrors, transparent walls, display cabinets and glass doors).

I spent two hours with Stephen and his team testing out the glasses. When I put them on I felt like a character in a science fiction novel. Like Jean in Maurice Renard's novella 'The Phony Man' I was suddenly seeing the world in a completely different way. Objects which would have been impossible for me to see shone before my eyes in shades of pink and white. I found the glasses incredibly easy to use and within minutes I was happily navigating my way round a series of obstacles. I would find these glasses especially useful at night, in glaring sunlight or in dappled shade. They would not only stop me from walking into things, they would also help me keep a watchful eye on my children who are often the first things to disappear when light conditions affect my vision.

Stephen and his team are still testing the glasses and are keen to hear from anyone who might find them useful. I'm hopoing to go back in a few months to have another go.

Seeing Electricity: Science Fiction or Science Fact?

 It is tempting to believe in the old adage that 'seeing is believing' and that the way the sighted see the world is the best, and only, way of seeing it. That the world is made up only of what we can see of it. This is certainly the approach of most opticians who try and use artificial means such as glasses and contact lenses to mimic the workings of the eye, thus helping the visually impaired to see as well as their perfectly sighted peers.


But what if there are better ways of seeing the world? What if the model offered by the normal human eye is not the most desirable one? Why don't opticians offer us different kinds of sight rather than always striving to replace what we are lacking with an artificial reproduction of it?


 At first this seems like the stuff of science-fiction. In fact in his 1923 novella L'Homme truqué (The Phony Man), French writer Maurice Renard describes what happens when electroscopes are implanted into a blind man's eyes. This operation gives the novel's hero Jean an initially alien, and highly perceptive view of the world. After his operation the first thing he sees is a hideously misshapen monster standing before him. It is only when this monster speaks that he realises that this is in fact his (human) doctor: the pulsating nerves, electrical impulses and brain waves that Jean can see are no less part of the human body than the skin and bones we are used to seeing. They seem alien to Jean because he is not used to looking at the body in this way. But once he becomes accustomed to this new way of seeing, he can relate to the world in a much more detailed way than his normally sighted friends.  He can see electrical impulses inside the human body, electricity flowing far underground, lights shining behind walls or energy fields several miles away. His ability to see through solid materials and across vast distances means that it is impossible to hide anything from him. The concept of secrecy loses all meaning as the plot develops, just as day and night and light and dark lose all signification for him for what we call darkness has no effect on his vision.  As the novel progresses, the reader is obliged to reconsider the very way we think in order to take into account Jean's new way of seeing. Traditional novelistic twists involving concealment, mistaken identity or suspense become impossible in a world where the protagonist can see inside and through people, buildings, the earth.


I read this story a couple of weeks ago and was enchanted to discover that this way of seeing is not limited to science fiction. On this morning's Start the Week, 'The Digital Future' (at 23 minutes), Anab Jain from futurology company Superflux describes exactly the kind of sight Renard evoked in 1923. She is developing a kind of  'prosthetic vision' whereby the blind can have a virus injected into the back of their eyes which would enable them to see electromagnetic spectrums that are not visible to normally sighted people. Apparently, the blind community has not been overly positive about Jain's project. But surely this kind of 'supersight' is the perfect way of rethinking the myths about the predominance of the ocular. I hope Jain's project succeeds. I hope it helps people see in a new way. But most of all I hope it reminds the sighted that their highly prized way of seeing the world is neither as powerful, nor as necessary to human happiness as opticians would like to have us believe.