BA/7/04
Meeting held at 1.30 pm on 7th July 2004, at RNIB, 105 Judd Street, London WC1H 9NE.
1. Rollcall: Maggy Grubb, David Boden, Iain Millard, Mark Stephenson, Fred Jakeman, Richard West, Stephen Phippen, Bill Poole, Hans Cohn, Sue Clamp, Lisa Bhogal, Jim McCafferty, Michael Townsend, Gail Chester, Gareth Davies, Marion Ripley, Jill Allen-King, Barbara Leighton, Peter Wilkins. (Paula Tooze was also in attendance, as an observer for Pia.)
Apologies: Peter Osborne, Harry Beevers, David McKerral, Anne Donnelly, Allan Young, Janet Bartholomew.
2. The minutes of the last meeting were accepted.
3. Matters arising from the minutes.
Lisa Bhogal asked if the minutes of the Moon Forum meeting would be circulated. It was agreed that we would leave it for people to contact Lisa if they wanted a copy.
Fred Jakeman asked if there was any more news about the pricing of braille paper; he had heard reports that the cost would be increased. Mike Townsend said that an increase was not imminent, though there was a review taking place of low cost braille items. Other examples where increases were expected were mentioned, and it was agreed that the matter should be taken forward to the next RNIB TCS meeting.
4. Officers' Reports.
(a) Chair
(1) UEBC
Bill Poole said that his report on the ICEB General Assembly had been circulated, and asked for comments.
Richard West said that though we were now being encouraged to consult with readers on UEBC, it was unclear exactly what we should be consulting on. Bill Poole replied that there were various committee reports, but that these were too technical to be circulated generally. Rule books are being written, but were not ready yet. So there would be a delay in what could be done. Mike Townsend asked whether other countries were preparing consultation material which could be shared, and if a common approach would be possible. Bill Poole replied that other countries were free to make their own arrangements, and he did not think that seeking agreement on this would necessarily be practical. For example, some countries may decide to consult through representatives only, a strategy which may not suit us. As regards materials, Bill Poole replied that if some were produced they could be used, but he thought that this should not be the only basis for making a decision: besides basic reading (which would perhaps not be difficult), there were also the questions of writing and technical braille. He thought that we needed a simple document stating what the principle changes were, similar to that which was produced for British Braille. Fred Jakeman asked whether the last consultation process used standard material. Bill Poole replied that it did, but that the material was not very good. We had confined the consultation process to a limited number of people as we did not think at the time that the code was sufficiently complete for a larger scale evaluation.
Fred Jakeman asked whether evaluation of UEBC had taken place in other countries. The National Federation in the US had rejected UEBC. Bill Poole said that the stance of the National Federation was based mainly on the issue of lower numbers; Mike Townsend commented that the basis of this had been more political than as a result of evaluation.
Gail Chester asked to what extent did we think that UEBC was ready now. Bill Poole replied that the contraction rules had not yet been written at all. Joe Sullivan's response to this assertion was that the code could be used and evaluated with either the UK or BANA literary rules without ambiguity; Bill Poole agreed, but took the view that this meant that the code was not in fact unified, and was therefore not ready. Bill Poole added that the decisions on contractions made at the UEBC Committee 3 meeting held in London had not gone forward within the UEBC project, although we had taken up some of them in the new edition of British Braille. Gail Chester said that given that UEBC was not fully developed, we should therefore restrict evaluation to a limited expert group.
As regards the position in the US, Bill Poole said that he believed that on BANA the two consumer organisations were against UEBC, but that the majority of BANA members were in favour. Mike Townsend added that the Federation had changed from being in favour to being against, and thinks most consumers would say no to change.
Gareth Davies raised the question about the form of the consultation. We had used conferences in the past, e.g. for New Contracted Braille in 1988, and could do so again. Bill Poole agreed that this would be possible, though his attitude was that there was at present no need to hurry, seeing that the code was incomplete - a situation which could be remedied.
Richard West pointed out that the new edtion of British Braille was about to be published, and wondered if the situation of UEBC affected its release. Bill Poole replied that the adjustments in British Braille in the direction of liberalizing the use of contractions were consistent with UEBC thinking, and that, on the whole, the new signs (such as those for euro and yen) were consistent with UEBC assignments. The change in the oblique stroke was also consistent with UEBC. However, there were of course many other things in UEBC which were not in British Braille, and some contractions are deleted in UEBC. Richard West said he was concerned that the public would not welcome a second stage of change, but Bill Poole replied that the proposed changes to British Braille had already been put to the public, and the responses seemed to indicate that these changes were acceptable.
Mike Townsend said he thought there was a danger of getting bogged down with the details of the code, at the expense of promotion. He would not like to see a situation where all other countries had adopted UEBC apart from the UK. There is greater internationalization in braille use now than previously, e.g. in production and borrowing. However Bill Poole said that he did not think we were in a position to give a lead one way or the other at the moment. We can expect that some countries will go ahead with UEBC, but was that enough for us to say that we should follow? NLB have said that their readers read material from many sources without problems, so would it matter if we went our own way? (This argument would not apply to technical material.) However, Mike Townsend made the further point that if we were in a small minority we might find it difficult to get braille translation software for our code.
Richard West said that he thought differences in basic signs, such as brackets, would be more of a problem than differences in contraction usage; but he added that we should also be trying to influence decisions being made about contractions. Bill Poole agreed, and said that this is what we were doing. Gail Chester added that we should back up this input with evidence from consultation with users, etc.
Mike Townsend said that he would prefer a conference on UEBC rather than setting up a formal consultation group. Lisa Bhogal wondered if the debate at the forthcoming UKABP conference could be used. Marion Ripley said that she was one of the organisers of the UKABP conference (to be held on 4-5 October in Shrewsbury), and explained that this discussion was planned to consist of a debate between those in favour of the changes implemented in the new edition of British Braille, those in favour of UEBC, and those preferring no change to the rules. But the conference was meant for braille producers, and was not primarily a forum for braille users, though of course users' views should be taken into account. The timetable had already been drafted and was fairly full, and it might be hard to find time for an extra debate. Bill Poole thought that the debate already planned should be sufficient. Richard West said that a lot of serious questions received in the feedback on British Braille had come from transcribers, so we could expect a substantial body of questions from the conference.
Mike Townsend thought that it would be helpful to organize a more specific BAUK conference on the issue, and Gail Chester agreed.
Bill Poole said that ICEB is restructuring the UEBC committees to complete their work, but the issue of contractions was not highlighted; he will try to press ICEB on this. If in 12 months time we found that the countries who have now expressed their intention to implement UEBC had actually done so, this could change our timescales for action.
The question was asked who was going to the UKABP conference? Stephen Phippen will be attending as a speaker, and Mike Townsend is willing to speak in the debate in favour of UEBC if he can attend. Bill Poole said that he could also possibly attend part of the conference.
In summary, Bill Poole said that the first stage for us would be to monitor the debate at the UKABP conference, and then follow up by planning a BAUK conference on UEBC.
(2) WBC
Bill Poole reported that progress on setting up a World Braille Council was encountering blockages. A draft constitution had been written by himself, John Wall and Fred Schroeder. John Wall had not been able to personally present the draft at the WBU Council meeting, and the feedback from that meeting had not been very satisfactory.
(b) Treasurer
Iain Millard reported that the financial statement for 2003-4 had been circulated. Some organisations have not yet paid their fees. Guide Dogs for the Blind do not currently have a representative, so payment will not be requested from them. (The subscription is now £50 per year, per member.) There had been quite a lot of confusion over the payment of ICEB membership fees. We actually paid in February, but the Treasurer of ICEB mistakenly thought that the payment had not come through to her. This was eventually sorted out a week before this BAUK meeting. We will need to pay ICEB fees for two years this year, as ICEB sent out the bills late. We had received a £300 donation from the Scottish National Federation for the Blind and the Royal Blind Asylum, and a £1000 donation to cover Hans Cohn's travel to the ICEB Assembly.
The financial report was accepted.
(The Secretary's report was moved to follow elections.)
5. Elections.
The following people were elected: Chair: Bill Poole; Vice Chair: Allan Young; Secretary: Stephen Phippen; Treasurer: Iain Millard. The post of Assistant Secretary was left open as there was doubt that it was necessary to name a specific person. The post of Public Relations Officer was left open as no one at the meeting was willing to stand (Lisa Bhogal having decided to stand down).
Richard West and David Boden were elected as Trustees.
Marion Ripley was elected as a coopted member.
Clare Gailans and Lisa Bhogal were standing down from the Literary Code Committee, and Barbara Leighton and Marion Ripley were elected as replacements.
Sue Clamp and Mike Townsend would be added to the list of members of the (possibly temporary) Technical Code Committee.
The existing membership of the Braille Promotion Committee would remain, with the addition of Maggy Grubb.
Sue Clamp and Maggy Grubb expressed their concern over the poor quality of braille sometimes produced by candidates doing exam papers. This matter could be taken up within the Braille Promotion Committee.
4. (b) Secretary. It was agreed that Steve Binns should be removed from the BAUK membership list: it was believed he was no longer a representative of NLBD.
Stephen Phippen reported that the new edition of British Braille was close to publication, and the question now arose of making the document available on the BAUK web site. The normal practice has been for BAUK codebooks to be produced and stocked by RNIB, who cover their production costs by the proceeds from sales. In recent discussions at RNIB, RNIB expressed its concern about the idea of BAUK making priced documents available on their web site as this could reduce hard copy sales, which in turn could force prices up in order that RNIB could cover its costs. After discussion, the feeling of the meeting was that while it would be of great benefit for British Braille and other codes to be available from the BAUK web site, BAUK nevertheless did not want to jeopardize the arrangements with RNIB for producing British Braille at this late stage. We would therefore delay moves to make the publication avaialble on the web site until further discussions had been held with RNIB. In these discussions it might be useful to make a distinction between electronic versions which could be browsed on the web, and files which could be downloaded from the site for printing in the same way as the hard copy versions.
6. Any other business.
Richard West reported that he had drafted an article on braille promotion, and he would circulate it by email.