Sight and sound

Just sometimes a radio programme comes along that really changes the way you hear — and interpret — the everyday sounds around you. With perfect timing, on New Year’s Day, Joe Acheson’s programme for the BBC World Service began the year with a startling, pin-drop-sharp lesson on how to listen. Sound of Snow and Ice took us to Finland in midwinter, to the Jyväskylä School for the Visually Impaired. The temperature in my study seemed to plummet as an extraordinary rasping noise echoed through the room, the sound of boots crunching on deep, deep snow. At Jyväskylä, sounds are crucial, for the school uses them to teach the children who have been born blind or with low vision how to see the world through what they can hear.

From the moment the children arrive at the school, which is in the midst of the Finnish countryside, halfway between Helsinki and Lapland, surrounded by lakes and forests and blanketed in snow for much of the year, they are introduced to another way of being. A constant beeping sound greets them, guiding them to the front door, so that they can walk towards it unaided and with confidence, knowing that they can find their way in without needing someone to guide them. Echo-boards, placed strategically at frequent intervals along the corridors, on the walls outside in the quadrangle, wherever they might walk, are used to teach the pupils how to hear the slight modulations created by any kind of surface alteration. The clipping sound of their footsteps and of their canes swishing across the floor changes when met by a door, a window, even a painting or noticeboard. Such changes can be used as ear-posts, telling those prepared to hear where they are. Some visitors to the school are surprised by all the wall decorations. ‘Why bother when the kids can’t see them?’ they ask. It takes a leap of understanding.

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