Launch BBC News: Studio B

[DTV]

Just a thing on the ramps. It may not have occurred to you - and that's fine - that it's very useful for correspondents with physical disabilities, like Frank Gardner and Sean Dilley.

Folks like them don't get much of a look-in on U.S. TV (I know - I lived there for eight years and spent a lot of time in newsrooms), and speaking as a wheelchair user myself, on the tiny handful of occasions I did live studio work for Sky a number of years ago, I had to do it from the (ramped) Sunrise area because the main desk was up steps on a platform. 

I don't fault Sky for this (after all, they put me - and at one time, the aforementioned Sean - on-screen, so they can't be accused of being discriminatory), but it was a visual deviation even for viewers who don't pay attention to pres things, so personally I welcome the Beeb's choice here to (literally) level the playing field.

The BBC have generally been quite good at this for a while, possibly because of having Frank Gardner as one of their high profile correspondents. The main desk section in the previous Studio B set also had a built-in ramp and the sets in Studio C and E are designed to be fully accessible for ordinary wheelchairs (I'm not sure if Nikki Fox's electric wheelchair could make it onto the main desk section). The TVC sets didn't have permanent ramps, but I think that they had them on hand as I remember seeing one next to the rostrum in one of the Barco sets when Frank Gardner was being interviewed in studio.

And, of course, these ramps don't just help in accessibility, they also help with moving chairs around. Though they are lower in the new set, the rostrums in the previous set are the best part of a foot in height - lifting office chairs isn't the easiest task in the world.