BA/1/04
Meeting at 1.30 pm on 12th November 2003 held at St. Dunstan's, 12-14 Harcourt Street, London, W1H 4HD.
1. Present: Sheila Armstrong, Peter Wilkins, David Boden, Barbara Leighton, Lisa Bhogal, Stephen Phippen, Iain Millard, Harry Beevers, Bill Poole, Hans Cohn, Jill Allen-King, Gail Chester, Allan Young.
Apologies: Richard West, Anne Donnelly, David McKerral, Peter Osborne, Fred Jakeman, Winnie Morrell, Gareth Davies, Jim McCafferty.
2. Minutes of the last meeting. A correction is needed to say that it was Barbara Leighton, not Lisa Bhogal, who suggested that the planned increase in BAUK subscription fees be put on hold.
3. There were no matters arising from the minutes.
4. Officers' reports.
(a) Chair:
(1) UEBC Committee 2. Bill Poole reported that an excellent teleconference of Committee 2 was held on September 30th; credit should be given to the Chair, Joe Sullivan, who prepared a good agenda, which with prior email discussions, made for a very effective meeting. Some of the decisions made were: 1. To retain the proposed bullet sign (dots 456 lower d); 2. To extend the number of transcriber-defined typeform indicators available; 3. That typeform indicators should be opened at the beginning of each relevant paragraph, with the closing indicator only being required at the end of the passage; 4. That when non-UEBC indicators are used (e.g. to mark text in a foreign language code), adjacent passages require at the transition both the return to UEBC indicator, and the indicator for the new passage; 5. That nesting of indicators could not be a strict requirement of UEBC because of the need to represent cases in print where such a rule is not followed, though nesting should be one of the factors taken into account when deciding their placement; 6. To change the proposed line break sign from dot 4 dots 1256 to dots 456, unspaced before, but spaced afterwards; 7. That additional accent signs, as well as long and short signs for verse, etc., need to be assigned; 8. That although there is a preference for assigning currency signs as dot 4 followed by a letter, there would not be a rule that all signs of this type would represent currency signs; 9. That no immediate action would be taken to assign Hebrew or Cyrillic character sets.
Hans Cohn asked, given that the two large US organisations of the blind had decided against UEBC, what the views were of their members on Committee 2. Bill Poole replied that no members of those groups were on Committee 2.
(2) World Braille Council update. Bill Poole reported that the WBU had agreed that the project should go ahead, but only slow progress was being made. It has been decided that John Wall, Bill Poole and Fred Schroeder would work on the constitution. Braille promotion would be part of WBC's work, as well as code development, etc.
(3) ABAPSTAS resolution. ABAPSTAS sent a letter to the Secretary saying that they were resigning from BAUK, one of the reasons being that the recent inquorate meetings were wasting their members' time. ABAPSTAS also asked BAUK to consider a resolution it had made calling for BAUK to be reconstituted so as to consist of a wider individual paying membership, and for its decisions to then be determined on a one member one vote system.
Sheila Armstrong thought that the proposal was worrying in that people would have to be paid up members of BAUK in order to be represented. BAUK does a lot of detailed work which most people wouldn't be interested in, and which wouldn't be suitable for general consultation. Allan Young asked whether the proposal expected that all paid up members would attend meetings; Bill Poole thought not. Gail Chester said she was not sure if this was a serious proposal, but would accept the implied criticism that BAUK should consult more or act more cooperatively in its decision making. Bill Poole said that he had not taken the proposal so much as a criticism, but as a solution to ensure that people could not vote twice when BAUK conducted public consultations. However, he agreed that it was undesirable that people would have to pay to be consulted, as the proposal required. Reading and writing were too basic for this; what other rights would membership confer on people? You cannot decide on technical issues simply by a head count; you have to explain the issues, and where necessary explain to people why it is not possible to simply follow what might be suggested by a consultation process.
Peter Wilkins said he thought that the ABAPSTAS proposal originated before the British Braille consultation, and that BAUK had now already done what they wished us to do. Sheila Armstrong suggested that BAUK could create a register of people who would be interested in its discussions; but Bill Poole thought there would be a danger that we would be seen to be making decisions only for the benefit of that group: other organisations could form such lists, but it would not be right for BAUK to do so. Bill Poole said that he would write a letter in reply to ABAPSTAS, saying that while we recognise that our consultation process is not perfect, their solution would not be acceptable.
(b) Secretary. Stephen Phippen said that BAUK needed to set up a joint technical code meeting (covering maths, science and computer codes), to consider the impact of the proposed changes to British Braille on those codes, as well as to consider UEBC issues. The previous committees were no longer active, and new membership was necessary. We were able to contact teachers, but it was harder to find braille-using professionals who could participate. It was suggested that Lisa Bhogal could place a notice for ABAPSTAS, and perhaps some former students could be contacted.
(c) Treasurer. Iain Millard reported that he had eventually managed to send payment for ICEB membership. He had also discovered that payment by standing order is cheaper than electronic payment, and it would avoid the difficulties we had had over communication. The meeting agreed that this method of payment could be used in future. The BAUK accounts were now being held in Excel instead of Sage, because the latter program was not compatible with the Treasurer's new computer.
5. British Braille.
Bill Poole said that the feedback received on the proposals for British Braille had been circulated to members; in addition there were three late responses, one from a former proofreader, and the others from teachers. BAUK now needed to decide what the next stage should be.
Allan Young said that he was in favour of the feedback being considered in detail by the Literary Code Committee: if people had taken the trouble to write in, we owed it to them to consider the responses by the proper means, i.e. through the LCC. This was generally agreed. Sheila Armstrong noted that there only seemed to be a small amount of negative feedback given the number of notices which had been sent out, which was encouraging.
Hans Cohn noted that some of the respondents queried why the set of religious contractions had been dropped, and asked what the answer was. Bill Poole replied that up to 1992 they had appeared as a special set to be used for religious works only, but following a recommendation from Torch Trust who had conducted a survey, it was decided to drop them altogether in the 1992 edition of British Braille. Sheila Armstrong said she believed that in the survey some people thought that the contractions were irreverent, but most people were concerned that the contractions being a special set used in religious works only, meant that people were not familiar enough with them to make them worth retaining. However, Sheila said she would check with Mike Townsend if this account was correct. Bill Poole added that there were other groups of special contractions, e.g. for science, maths, etc., but these had also been dropped much earlier.
Gail Chester reported that the 2004 braille national curriculum tests will use capitals for the first time, and asked whether the rules as amended in the new British Braille, where "to", "into" and "by" can be contracted before a capital sign, should be used. Bill Poole replied that they could, i.e. people could be forward-looking as regards this change.
Bill Poole concluded that the feedback would be considered at a meeting of the LCC, and we could ratify British Braille at the next full BAUK meeting on 17th March 2004.
6. ICEB Assembly.
Bill Poole reported that hotel reservations for the assembly need to be made by individual attendees; individuals will need to pay for themselves, and then claim the money back. Hans Cohn has managed to obtain separate funding.
ICEB constitutional amendments need to be put forward and signed by three countries.
Bill Poole asked if BAUK would like to nominate anyone for the ICEB Executive Committee; if so, names need to be put forward to the Nominations Committee. The current members of the EC are: President: Fred Schroeder; Vice President: Bill Poole; Immediate Past President: Darleen Bogart; Treasurer: Kim Charlson; Secretary: Reinette Popplestone; as well as three members at large. Bill Poole thought he would not be chosen as President because he has not been wholly supportive of UEBC, but he would be willing to stand for that post if Fred Schroeder stood down. The meeting agreed that he should stand if that happened. Allan Young suggested that Mike Townsend could stand for a post. Sheila Armstrong said that she was unsure if Mike would in fact be able to go; in this case it was suggested that Sarah Home might be able to attend, as the assembly would coincide with a trip she was making to CNIB. Hans Cohn said that he would be willing to serve on the Nominations Committee as a replacement for Isobel Yule.
Peter Wilkins said that UKABP have decided not to fund a member to go to the ICEB Assembly as that person would not have voting rights. Bill Poole pointed out that if Mike Townsend did not go, there would then be room for a delegate who was a member of UKABP.
Allan Young asked if RNIB would be funding Stephen Phippen? Stephen replied that he was not yet sure.
Bill Poole said that no papers had yet been put forward for the assembly - there may in fact not be any. At the assembly it will be open for people to make specific amendments to UEBC, or to reject the whole code.
7. Reports from committees.
Lisa Bhogal said that a report from a meeting of the Moon Committee had been circulated. The Moon Committee wished to retain links with BAUK, but now wanted to be a separate body. The meeting agreed that Lisa should continue attending Moon Committee meetings.
Hans Cohn asked if it was a requirement that each BAUK committee should have a full BAUK representative as member, and pointed out that the Music Committee did not have such a member at present. Bill Poole said that Barbara Leighton could become a member of that committee to satisfy that condition.
Jill Allen-King will be added to the Braille Promotion Committee. Jill said that there was no teaching of braille in her area at all, and that she felt strongly on this issue. She had wanted to become a member of BAUK because she wanted to make sure that the needs of people who were not good readers of braille were included in BAUK's considerations.
8. Any other business. Lisa Bhogal reported that a motion had been put forward by the National Federation of the Blind; Bill Poole said that the motion could be dealt with by the Braille Promotion Committee.
The meeting closed.