BA/6/02
Meeting held at 1.30 pm on 15th July 2002, at RNIB Judd Street, London WC1H 9NE.
1. Rollcall: Michael Townsend, Bill Poole, Lisa Bhogal, David Boden, Richard West, Stephen Phippen, Clare Gailans, Hans Cohn, Allan Young, Barbara Leighton, Iain Millard, Peter Wilkins.
Apologies: David McKerral, David Taylor, Gail Chester, Isobel Yule, Kevin Connell, Claire Wilson, Kevin Carey, Sarah Home, Irene Grayson, Alison May, Gareth Davies, Peter Osborne.
2. The minutes of the last meeting (10th December 2001) were approved.
3. Matters arising from the last meeting:
Allan Young asked if there was anything to report on the revision of the Welsh Braille Code. Stephen Phippen replied that a print draft had been received from Nia Morgan at Cardiff, which he had put into braille. Copies of the document had been circulated to Bill Poole, Gail Chester and Gareth Davies, but the code still needed to be ratified. Mike Townsend said he thought that the code might already be in use, in which case it would be awkward if we recommended any changes. Bill Poole thought that changes would be unlikely as the code was not very different from the version we ratified in 1995.
Allan Young then asked if there had been progress on setting up a BAUK web site. A report from Peter Osborne was read out in which he said that due to his additional responsibilities at RNIB, in particular a commitment of 40% of his time to the Daisy Consortium, he had not made any progress on this. He also announced in his report that he would have to stand down from the post of Public Relations Officer for BAUK, for the same reason.
4. Officers' reports.
(a) Chair.
(1) World Braille Council:
Bill Poole reported that he had attended a meeting of the World Braille Council Working Group in Paris on 30th May. The meeting was chaired by Euclid Herie of Canada. The purpose of the meeting was to consider the setting up of a World Braille Council under WBU. The general tone of the meeting was positive, although Bill Poole was less optimistic than others. The meeting considered the WBU resolution which emphasised the task of unifying braille signs; though Bill Poole also wanted braille promotion, braille production and the provision of braille libraries to be included in their remit. The inclusion of the latter areas would, however, require approval from WBU. The composition of the proposed WBC still needed to be resolved.
There was agreement that it would be foolish to try to set up a general braille standard: attempts at unification would have to be at a limited level, e.g. for punctuation, accents and numbers, etc. Some people had talked about unifying contractions, but Bill Poole thought that this would be difficult as different languages had different requirements.
Pedro Zurita presented a paper including background information on the publication of the second edition of World Braille Usage. The role of UNESCO in this venture was raised, and the need for the braille community (rather than UNESCO) to retain control over the braille codes.
The name of the organisation received a lot of discussion, but it was decided to keep to "World Braille Council". The question was raised as to what enforcement powers WBC would have. Bill Poole suggested that, at least initially, such powers would only be possible if a consensus existed, though some others wanted immediate enforcement powers.
Recommendations were needed to put to the Executive of WBU by 2003. To that end a call was made for papers which would generate resolutions; they would need to be written by the end of 2002. Bill Poole will write a paper on areas of code unification; such a paper should be useful even if it concluded that there were no such areas. Fred Schroeder will write a second paper on the structure and membership of WBC. A third paper will be required on finance and funding, and Darleen Bogart is being asked to write it.
Richard West commented that the issue of UNESCO's involvement in World Braille Usage seemed similar to that of ISO's involvement with 8-dot braille a few years ago. A better procedure for dealing with such matters is for the relevant braille authorities from the different countries to first reach agreement, and only then for the matter to be put to such umbrella organisations to be rubber stamped.
Hans Cohn said that unification would be of benefit to language students, and such people should be consulted on this issue; besides punctuation, there are also simple letter groups, e.g. "en", "in" and "st", which could usefully be unified. Bill Poole commented that there are problems with letter groups, but he would support good suggestions. Mike Townsend added that the process of unification of English braille has been very lengthy and costly, and he thought that attempts to unify across different languages would be a waste of time and money, and could not succeed. He would prefer WBC to concentrate on promoting braille.
Allan Young asked if there was any indication of where finance for WBC would come from. Bill Poole replied that there wasn't at present.
Bill Poole said that he would be happy for BAUK members to see the paper he had been asked to write for WBC.
(2) Braille symposium in Denmark:
Bill Poole read out resolutions made at an international symposium: "Braille in the Age of Digitisation", held in Denmark on April 16-19, 2002. These dealt with the braille education of children; braille production; music, maths and science notation; research into braille teaching and usage.
Mike Townsend asked what the status of the symposium was, but this was not known. He added that the promotion of Daisy has proved very effective working through a consortium, and wondered whether something similar was being discussed here; he thought it would be a good idea for braille. Allan Young said that the NLB had sent two people to the symposium, mainly for information.
(3) Other news items:
Pam Lorimer has now had her book on the history of braille published, which she has been working on for about 20 years. This was announced at the July meeting of the National Federation of the Blind of the US, and was well received.
It has been reported that from July 2002 weekday daytime meetings at Judd Street will not be allowed for outside organisations, the reason given being that it is not practical, and RNIB meetings are having to be moved because of it. Bill Poole said he was not convinced this measure was necessary as there were more meeting rooms at Judd Street than there were at Great Portland Street. He has spoken to some senior people at RNIB about the matter, but they were unaware of this change. This matter will have to be looked at further with regard to BAUK's future meetings.
Bill Poole said that he had been invited to a Vision Forum meeting, but had not attended. He had heard reports that it was mainly concerned with eye health, but that it was over-ambitious for resources. BAUK had been invited as a non-paying member, but would have to choose whether to become a subscribing member by mid-2003.
(b) Secretary. Stephen Phippen asked to be notified of any changes of contact details for the updated membership list. Lisa Bhogal mentioned that she thought the BAUK membership list was due to be placed as an agenda item for the next meeting.
(c) Treasurer. Iain Millard said that he had sent out invoices and letters to affiliated organisations explaining the increase in BAUK fees. In response, VIEW has said that they wanted to reduce their membership from three to one. He has not yet received payment from a number of organisations. It was also reported that New College Worcester Former Students' Association has decided to leave BAUK. Iain Millard wondered if it might be easier to collect annual subscriptions by standing order, to which Bill Poole replied that we could try, though it might not be easy. The annual accounts were agreed.
In a general point, Mike Townsend wondered if people are not seeing a strong purpose in what BAUK is doing, given the poor attendance at the current meeting. Allan Young said he shared this concern, and had previously raised the issue of officers not attending or reporting at meetings. Bill Poole said that he recognised what was being said, but was not sure what action to take. It was suggested that we could ask individuals whether there were things BAUK should be doing but was not.
(d) Public Relations Officer. Peter Osborne was not present at the meeting, but had made a report which was read out under item 3. With regard to the setting up of a web page, Richard West said that he would be able to progress this, given our previous decision to go ahead if it could be set up for no more than £1000. It was agreed that Richard West, Mike Townsend and David Boden would work together on this matter.
5. Elections.
The following were elected: Chair, Bill Poole; Vice Chair, Mike Townsend; Secretary, Stephen Phippen; Assistant Secretary, Allan Young; Treasurer, Iain Millard; Public Relations Officer, Lisa Bhogal; trustees, Richard West and David Boden. Kevin Carey was elected as a coopted member.
The following were re-elected to the Literary Code Committee: Bill Poole, Sheila Armstrong, Lisa Bhogal, Gail Chester, Hans Cohn, Clare Gailans, Stephen Phippen, Claire Wilson, Allan Young.
6. ICEB meeting in New Zealand.
Bill Poole reported in a separate document on this meeting which he had attended.
Hans Cohn said that he had also attended the meeting, working in particular with UEBC Committee 5 dealing with layout. He had written a paper on plays: it was the view of some of the committee members that different braille versions were needed for ordinary readers, school texts and for performance, but he did not agree with this. There was also discussion on footnotes, for which a whole range of options were put forward, but for which there was no agreement.
Mike Townsend asked if there had been any progress on Bill Poole's proposals to resurrect some groups of contractions in UEBC. Bill Poole replied that "com" had been rejected, but sequencing was still under discussion. He was in favour of sequencing partly for space saving reasons, but also because there seemed to be a lack of evidence that sequencing is found to be inconvenient by readers. In the BAUK survey, 54% actually wanted more sequencing. In UEBC there seemed to be an obsession with print form, rather than the representation of print. Lisa Bhogal asked whether, if sequences were restored, it would include both groups; Bill Poole replied that all cases were under consideration, but could be treated separately. Mike Townsend asked whether bi-directionality was an issue with the "com" contraction, to which Bill Poole said that it was. Mike Townsend added that he was concerned about money being spent on evaluating the code while it was incomplete.
7. Report on the update of British Braille.
Stephen Phippen reported that after several meetings of the Literary Code Committee, the draft of British Braille was now ready for circulation to BAUK members for ratification. He had been quoted from RNIB a cost of about £550 to emboss copies for BAUK members; despite this cost it was agreed that all members should be given a copy for ratification, and that we should go ahead with this production. [The actual cost eventually charged was in fact £116.33.] It was agreed to hold a special BAUK meeting in October to deal with this matter, and hopefully ratify British Braille. Stephen Phippen said that he would send out a list of changes with the draft, to help members locate and consider the issues. It was agreed that Literary Code Committee members were entitled to vote at that meeting. Members should send in any comments, etc. in writing to Stephen Phippen in time for them to be collated for the meeting.
8. Braille Promotion Committee report.
Richard West reported that only three people turned up for the meeting. Some members had resigned, but he was happy to run with a small group.
For the planned braille strategy day, there were several ideas which might be useful: RNIB's material on reading and writing; some research on schools by E & E; labelling methods; soft copy braille. The date is projected for early next year, with RNIB taking on running the day, and BAUK providing help and giving its endorsement.
Hans Cohn said that since reading and writing braille is central to literacy for blind people, could not the Braille Promotion Committee approach local authorities seeking that they provide free classes in braille as they do to support sighted literacy?
9. Report from Music Committee.
Clare Gailans reported that an international meeting on braille music is to be held in Germany on 2-4 October. It was agreed that she could go on behalf of BAUK.
The meeting closed.