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Some 20 years ago, when I was in my late thirties, a rare degenerative retinal condition meant I lost all functional vision. I was left with little sight but a “visual memory” – and the same underlying affinity for the novel, the curious and the unfamiliar that I’d always had. In short, I hankered after the kind of intellectual stimulation that only travel brings.
It’s a desire that many might think would be significantly compromised by sight loss but that’s been minimal in my experience. The kind of questions I might ask when picking and choosing destinations will be different from yours; the planning I do is occasionally viewed as eccentrically meticulous, spontaneity has unique logistical complications and I tend to gravitate towards multi-city bus tours, walking tours and bespoke accessibility offerings.
But for me and my partially sighted wife, Christina, it’s fundamentally all about the experiences we couldn’t have without travel. For us to travel, a strategic blend of technology, services and human assistance is needed.
In my case, adaptive technology – designed to make accessing content easier – mainly centres on synthetic speech delivered through a screen reader on my iPhone and my PC. Often available free, a screen reader app reads out on-screen text.
Virtual assistance is a more recent adaptive technology option. Via simple voice commands from trained agents or AI-powered autonomous response systems, I use a live video feed from my Envision smart glasses and AIRA (Artificial Intelligence Remote Assistance), to do things like navigate unfamiliar environments, to identify and describe landmarks, scan and read text on menus and take the all-important opportune photos.
Our latest trip to Europe included travelling through Dubai where airport terminal attendants insisted that we travel by wheelchair. We tried to be diplomatic, working from the starting point – the assumption – that airport assistance staff have good interpersonal skills that they want to put into practice.
We suggested there were mutual benefits to sighted guiding instead. After conferring in Arabic and deciding that our idea was a non-starter, Mr DXB says, “No, this is much better for you.” All in all, it proved quite the reminder to never assume that disability assistance etiquette or training has any global currency.
While a white cane often reveals compassionate kindness, it can also induce confusion and unease. We find it important to begin a conversation with something akin to “I take this train every day, I just need your help with…” or “We are fine provided you help us to…”.
In some countries, people with disabilities are still not visible and still considered to be people in need of everyday care. Our crusade against such beliefs and norms involves only gently taking opportunities to say, “It’s only my eyes that don’t function, nothing else.”
Once in London, we wanted to go where so many other tourists go. No, not Buckingham Palace but the Dungeons for a true immersive experience. The Dungeons are a highly entertaining theatrical portrayal of London’s dark and horrible history; hard to imagine a more accessible and appropriately choreographed sensory experience for people with sight loss.
The whiff of musky plague smell hit us as soon as we encountered the plague doctor show. Assuming our fellow sighted guests were squirming at dead bodies, guts, skeletons, leeches, blood, flashing lights and the blackouts, we roared with laughter at sounds of vomiting, the doctor’s candid morbidity and the loud gong as we felt leeches under the leather benches, air cannon and the water/blood squirt.
Across the channel to France, where we included a chocolate and pastry tour at Toulouse, a progressive breakfast in Avignon and something of a culinary cavalcade in France’s capital of gastronomy, Lyon. In between, it seemed as if it was a tour de croissant, tour de baguette and tour de gelato.
There were several similarities with the Tour de France: the distinctive jerseys, the support riders, the diverse terrains, the individual time trials and the odd doping scandal but not so much with the cardiovascular endurance, the rest days and treacherous mountain climbs.
We explored the highlights of fragrance-making on a guided workshop experience at Maison Molinard perfume factory in Nice. The workshop room, and indeed our olfactory epithelium, was saturated with an overpowering aura of jasmine, rose, woody sandalwood, musk, vanilla, bergamot, earthy patchouli, lavender, floral ylang, fruity frankincense, citrus oils, freesia, gardenia, sweet honey neroli, and spicy tonka bean.
I took the quantitative analysis approach—surely marks out of 10 are more meaningful than somehow making sense of nebulous arbitrary responses such as nice, good, like, and other four-letter words?
The Guinness Storehouse was our first stop in Dublin. We arrived at the perfect pint demonstration and participation gig. Our host explained the thinking at each stage of the process. “We look to create the ideal balance between the creamy head and the dark, rich body of the beer. The careful pouring technique, along with the settling and topping off, helps achieve the perfect texture, flavour, and presentation that Guinness is famous for worldwide.”
The guide elbowed me into position behind the bar. While clearly not expecting to critique and tutor a blind person in the high-precision art form that is pouring a pint of the black stuff, he was remarkably engaging and instinctively pragmatic.
He was even comfortable enough to try a joke, of sorts. After taking me through every step of pouring the perfect Guinness – from selecting the right tulip-shaped glass to topping up a pint after “the settle” (my advice is to use sound-emitting liquid level indicators) – he declared that visually appealing presentation was the last step in determining whether you had, indeed, poured the perfect pint.
“Well, there you go. It’s not the perfect pint, but in your case, you wouldn’t care what it looks like; you just savour the taste, which is the whole point anyway…”
At Blarney Castle, you climb 102 steps up to the top. Then, when you get to where the stone is at the top – it’s built into the outer defences known as the machicolations – you lie on your back, reach over and you kiss the stone. You can’t fall through because there are metal bars underneath where your head is.
The House of Waterford Crystal was a very special opportunity to touch some iconic Waterford-commissioned pieces. I took the little tactile tour. A 9/11 memorial piece, the 11kg NBA basketball trophy and one of the 2600 pieces from the millennial ball that drops in Times Square.
So there you have it. We’re now home, reflecting on the ancient traditions of the desert, London’s horrors, egg-chasing in the land of the Franks, the Cathar heresy in Toulouse, Apollo’s appendages in Nice, Avignon’s Papal Schism, Lyon’s Renaissance architecture, Dublin’s literary legacy, the mythology and folklore of Downpatrick and the Giant’s Causeway, jovial jarvey jaunts in Killarney, the cliffs of the Wild Atlantic Way and first-glass artistry at Waterford Crystal.
Our memories are shaped audibly: Hearing the gags in the musical The Book of Mormon at the Prince of Wales theatre in London; the roar of the crowd at Stade de France when I headed to the Rugby World Cup opening ceremony and the All Blacks vs France clash; then, later listening to tour guide Harry’s humour on his free walking tour which takes in medieval Toulouse, the Cathars, the Albigensian Crusade, the Inquisition, the Canal du Midi, the revolution in Toulouse, and the great flood of 1875.
Harry’s wit, ingenuity and unorthodox style was evident from his online intro, “Hi, I am a writer, researcher, barman, quizmaster and history fanatic. Over 20 years ago, I moved from Edinburgh to Toulouse. That’s from rain and whisky to sun and swimming pools.”
Touch, too, plays its part. I’m thinking of the exploration with hands the sculpture of Hercules slaying Geryon at the Archaeology Museum of Toulouse, the leeches-under-the-bench simulation at the London Dungeon or holding the 11kg NBA basketball commission piece at the House of Waterford Crystal.
And who can forget the aroma of the orange flower petite brioche at La Bonbonnière in Toulouse, the fromage fermentation room of La Crêperie Lyonnaise or the peat at the Kerry Bog Village, which explores Ireland’s rural history, heritage and lifestyle.
Gastronomically, I’ll long remember Julian’s progressive Avignon breakfast, the charcutiers at Les Fines Gueules in Lyon or the Chester cake at Blarney Castle.
This is how I see the world.
