BA/2/03
Meeting at 1.30 pm on 17th December 2002, in Seminar rooms 1 and 2, at RNIB, 105 Judd Street, London WC1H 9NE.
1. Rollcall: Nigel Berry, Gareth Davies, Lisa Bhogal, Kevin Connell, Stephen Phippen, Bill Poole, Hans Cohn, Barbara Leighton, Clare Gailans, Gail Chester, Allan Young.
Apologies: David Taylor, Peter Osborne, Peter Wilkins, Iain Millard, Fred Jakeman, Richard West, Mike Townsend, David Boden, Sarah Home, Irene Grayson, Jim McCafferty.
The Chair, Bill Poole, ruled that since the number of people present was insufficient for a quorum, the meeting would have the status of an ad hoc committee. He also wished to take some agenda items in a different order.
2. Minutes of the last meeting (15th July 2002). Hans Cohn said that item 6 incorrectly reported that he had attended the ICEB meeting in New Zealand. In fact his communications with Committee 5 have been through e-mail.
3. Developments with UEBC. Bill Poole reported that the National Federation of the Blind of the US (NFBUS) in its July 2002 meeting had voted to reject UEBC; the American Council of the Blind had also rejected it earlier. He had only heard about the NFBUS decision in November, and thought that the Project Committee should have informed him earlier. A telephone conference of the Project Committee was held on 2nd December during which the three NFBUS resolutions relating to this issue were discussed. Resolution 3 said that we should continue work based on the Nemeth-Cranmer principles - this was not taken. Resolution 4 was sponsored by the Technical Director of NFBUS, and said that we should not support UEBC because: (a) it destroyed the maths, science and computer codes used in the US, which would be expensive to replace; (b) the US Congress is about to pass an act which will require that textbooks be made available in predefined electronic format, which should result in the greater availability of braille - this is therefore not a good time to make changes to the code; (c) UEBC does not address the matter of reformatting print material for braille in an automatic way. In their view UEBC is not superior to the current system, so the cost of implementation is not justified; and it was claimed that BANA had abrogated its responsibility in allowing the development of a code which has not been adopted by other countries. Bill Poole said that he thought this last view was unfair: it was a courageous move for BANA to open its original project to involve other countries. NFBUS then resolved to strongly support the existing US codes. Their Iowa resolution 5 called for all efforts to change codes to cease, while the developments on the availability of electronic files were on-going.
During the conference call Bill Poole said that the UEBC project should either be abandoned, or else there should be a big publicity drive in order to try to gain acceptance in the more hostile countries, the US and UK. The other 5 participating countries were already very supportive of UEBC; it would be a curious situation if UEBC was passed by a corresponding 5 to 2 vote. Fred Schroeder and Darleen Bogart were very reluctant to abandon the project now. Darleen said that there was strong support in Canada; and if UEBC were passed at ICEB level, individual countries would still be entitled to ratify it at country level. It was agreed that Darleen and Reinette Popplestone would jointly work on the publicity.
Allan Young asked, assuming BANA and BAUK decide against UEBC but others decide in favour, whether the code was in a fit state to go ahead, and whether the countries in favour could practically follow this route. NLB currently shares files with Canada so the situation could be quite awkward for us. The code would need to be well documented for it to be produced here as a second code. Nigel Berry wondered how the braille production capacity of the 5 countries in favour compared to that of the US and UK.
Kevin Connell thought that it would be sensible to postpone introducing UEBC if it would be an obstacle to using standardised electronic files, as mentioned in the motion. Gail Chester, however, didn't see how the code could be an obstacle; in fact the reverse could be the case as the availability of electronic files would mean that it would be easy to produce braille in any required code through translation software. Stephen Phippen agreed.
Stephen Phippen said he was still attracted by the idea of allowing UEBC to continue for a time as an "alternative" code, and allowing it to find its own level with users. A decision could be made about it once we had more concrete experience of it as a code in use. Nigel Berry said that he would be concerned from the educational point of view if this were the case. Lisa Bhogal thought that UEBC would have a negative impact and would cause people to give up using braille. Stephen Phippen replied that in the scenario he had described this should not be a fear: people would not be compelled to use UEBC, and could "vote with their feet". Lisa also added that she was not in favour of abolishing sequencing, which was currently in the UEBC system.
Bill Poole replied to some of the issues raised:
Does the project have a future? It is hard to say. In Canada, South Africa, Nigeria and New Zealand people wanted to start using UEBC as soon as possible, and regarded it as a solution to braille production problems. They viewed the current uncertainties as being only transitional.
Is the code in a fit state? There are still some issues to be resolved, but by 2004 the code will be settled and implementable.
Could the countries who supported UEBC go it alone? Probably, but it would result in greater discontinuities in code use than there is now. Neither side wants to give up. In the US different printing houses could take different sides.
Would there be a course book for the code? Yes. A rule book is currently being written, and that would be followed by a course book from which the code could be learnt. The writing of both these books comes within the scope of the project.
Gail Chester asked what work had been done within the project on formatting. Bill Poole replied that the US participants were keen that print format should be followed; but this would not be solved by the expected greater availability and use of electronic files. Stephen Phippen added that it is increasingly the case that books can be regarded not as being in one particular medium or another (e.g. print or braille), but as being the information itself (e.g. held in an electronic file) which can be presented in one or more media. Print doesn't have the primacy it once had; according to this perspective a braille book should be regarded as a presentation of the original source information, not of the particular print presentation, although reference to the latter is of course still useful. Nigel Berry said that the needs of tactile readers should take priority over slavishly following print, though Kevin Connell added that some readers do need to know about some aspects of the print version of a book.
Bill Poole then asked the meeting what recommendations we should make. Allan Young said that he supported Stephen Phippen's suggestion, which allowed UEBC to be an experimental code. Gail Chester raised the question of what this might mean in terms of braille production - could material be published in the code? Bill Poole then sought confirmation that BAUK should continue to participate in the project, which the meeting gave, but it was added that we should try to precipitate a decision on the code before the next ICEB General Assembly takes place. It was also confirmed that in participating in the project there was no implied commitment from BAUK that it would implement the code - we have already said that we would want to conduct a public referendum on the issue before getting to that stage. Bill Poole said that he would write a paper on the matter for circulation for the next BAUK meeting.
4. BAUK meeting attendance.
Bill Poole said that we needed to consider ways of improving the recent poor attendance at BAUK meetings. Some options were:
(1) To give members options for meeting dates.
(2) To set regular meeting dates which members would know well in advance.
(3) To strengthen the message sent out about the importance of attending.
Gareth Davies added another suggestion that the criteria for a quorum could be reduced, e.g. to a third, but Gail Chester thought that if the quorum level needed to be as low as that it raised the question of whether we had the right people as members.
Allan Young pointed out that the problem with low attendance coincided with RNIB's move to Judd Street, and Stephen Phippen added that it also coincided with the increased variability of meeting dates - previously they were linked to RNIB Executive Council meetings. Bill Poole said that the latter no longer existed, but we could try to link our meetings to the RNIB Assembly meetings, held twice a year. The question was raised whether BAUK actually needed three meetings a year, but it was generally thought that these were required.
Barbara Leighton wondered whether part of the problem might be that some organisations could not afford to send representatives, but Bill Poole replied that if this were the case organisations could claim travel expenses from BAUK funds, but they tended not to do this.
On the question of the location of meetings, Clare Gailans said that Birmingham was fairly central and might be preferable, but Gareth Davies replied that in his experience London usually turns out to be the best venue, and most people can get there reasonably easily. Birmingham New Street station is not very accessible for blind people. Hans Cohn added that Judd Street is conveniently close to the stations.
Gail Chester asked if BAUK had a provision for postal ballots. Bill Poole replied that we did not at present, but there was nothing in the constitution against it. However, he was not generally in favour of postal ballots for BAUK, and did not think we could change the constitution by such means.
It was agreed to try to fix the next BAUK meeting for the day preceding the coming RNIB Assembly (it was thought 9th April). The Secretary would send out a notice and ask for a response from all members to say whether or not they could attend.
5. Arrangements for a meeting with UKABP. It was agreed that BAUK need only send three members to the proposed joint meeting with UKABP to discuss the implementation of the new edition of British Braille. The BAUK representatives would be decided by BAUK officers.
6. The new edition of British Braille. Bill Poole asked if there were any further comments or feedback on the draft from people who weren't at the previous meetings. Nigel Berry said he thought there were a lot of good changes, for example moving the closing italic indicator to the end of the last word, and in general it was definitely an improvement. But one thing he did not like was the two-cell oblique stroke sign. He didn't particularly object to the new sign (as opposed to any other two-cell sign), but only that it was two cells rather than one. Bill Poole replied that the change was made to avoid the ambiguities inherent in the existing sign.
Stephen Phippen reported that he had now received a response from Duxbury to his questions about implementing the changes in their translation software (DBT and MegaDots). In summary, it said that the changes were implementable, and the timescale would probably be between 6 months and a year, blending in with the normal cycle of program maintenance and allowing for testing, etc. The changes would be easier to implement in DBT because the program has been designed to be largely table driven, which can be simply updated. In MegaDots more of the translation is handled within the program code itself, which can mean that it is trickier to change. Duxbury would not specifically charge for updating DBT but would treat it as a normal upgrade (with the standard upgrade charge). For MegaDots, which has a more limited user base, is DOS based, and for which the coding issues are more complex, it would be harder for them to justify the work. However, if they were able to hire an additional programmer for a year the equation would perhaps balance better for them.
Bill Poole said that in the notice for the next meeting we should highlight the fact that the publication of British Braille is being held up because poor attendance has meant that it cannot be ratified.
The meeting closed.