BA/3/08
Meeting held at 1.30 pm on 26 March 2008 at RNIB, 105 Judd Street, London WC1H 9NE.
1. Rollcall: John Savage, Jim McCafferty, David Boden, Iain Millard, Stephen Phippen, Maggy Grubb, Jane Sellers, Bill Poole, Richard West, Sarah Home, Alison Roberts, Sheila Armstrong, Marion Ripley, Hans Cohn, Lisa Jones.
Apologies: Peter Osborne, Michael Townsend, Steve McCall, David McKerral, Barbara Leighton, Janet Bartholomew.
2. The minutes of the last meeting (12 December 2007) were approved.
3. Matters arising from the minutes. Peter Osborne (in a message sent to the meeting) asked for the following to be noted: 1. In connection with Richard West's comment that a tactile station map of St Pancras would be helpful, he could report that RNIB is working with London Transport to deliver a range of such maps over the coming years. 2. RNIB's contribution to the costs of attendance at the ICEB (International Council on English Braille) General Assembly has been paid.
Hans Cohn said that he now had an update to his article on the physical aspects of reading braille, and would distribute it via the Secretary.
Marion Ripley asked if there were any updates on pharmaceutical braille. Richard West reported that Sarah Morley-Wilkins had attended a European Conference on the physical aspects of braille (e.g. size, height), and that this had gone well; Bill Poole added that the conference was not concerned with the braille signs themselves. Stephen Phippen said that he had been asked to compile a spreadsheet setting out the current position on different countries' braille usages for pharmaceutical labels, based on information supplied. He had got as far as he could, but the information was incomplete. He understood that George Bell was going to try to progress this. As regards the UK, although BAUK has discussed and agreed some of the proposed new signs, there remained some conventions which it needed to approve (e.g. dropping letter signs as compared to SEB). Bill Poole reported that he had been asked if he would be willing to be involved in the task of trying to bring more uniformity of braille signs across the EU.
4. Officers' reports.
(a) Chair.
Bill Poole said that he would reorder the meeting's agenda items. He would welcome input on the content of a UK report on the ICEB Assembly which he was planning to write.
(b) Secretary.
Stephen Phippen announced that he had now completed a new edition of the Braille Science Notation (re-typesetting it and bringing the text into line with the latest rules in the British Braille and Braille Mathematics Notation codebooks. The print is available from the BAUK web site, but the braille still needs to be updated.
(c) Treasurer.
Iain Millard reported that BAUK had received £10,000 from RNIB to cover costs for attending the ICEB Assembly, and £15,000 for the UEB (Unified English Braille) consultation. Stephen Phippen noted that these large sums of money altered our status as regards the Charity Commission, and it meant that we would now be required to make a more extensive annual return, including financial details. Bill Poole asked if BAUK had received any money from RNIB to support the merger process with UKABP (UK Association of Braille Producers) and COTIS (Confederation of Transcribed Information Services); Iain Millard said not.
Iain Millard said that he would be willing to continue as Treasurer if asked at the July AGM.
(d) Public Relations Officer.
Mike Townsend was not present at the meeting, and had no report. Peter Osborne reported that RNIB had worked with Harrods to deliver a tactile wall mounting in one of its lifts. The exhibit is designed to represent the importance of braille to people, featuring a series of quotations. It is estimated that half a million people will pass through the area during the three months of the exhibition of art including this feature on braille.
5. UEB consultation.
Bill Poole opened the discussion by saying that the main items were the questionnaire, and the action plan.
Richard West said that in the proposal, his son Alan has agreed to process the questionnaire. A charge would be made for setting up, plus £1 per record, and £25 per report. He will receive print and braille questionnaires in batches, and there will be an email address for receiving electronic questionnaires. If we also want telephone questionnaires, he would prefer these to be sent to him electronically. Lisa Jones has offered to be the post box for print and braille questionnaire returns, as well as receiving telephone questionnaires, and they will be forwarded to his son every week. He will read the braille scripts. Lisa said that messages could be left on the answer phone, but asked if she could set a cut off time of 8 pm for receiving such calls; this was agreed. She could ring back free of charge, apart from to mobile phones; Bill Poole said that BAUK would reimburse her for such calls. Both Richard and Lisa reassured the meeting that they would be absolutely fair in handling responses, which Bill Poole accepted unreservedly.
Marion Ripley suggested that a ceiling be set on costs (e.g. in case we received a much bigger response than expected). Bill Poole suggested a cap of £5000, and this was agreed.
The questionnaire was then discussed in detail, and a number of amendments made to the draft. In particular, the instructions will be amended so that people who do not read braille by touch would by-pass the question asking "For what purpose do you read braille". Also, Marion Ripley wanted there to be two final questions (replacing question 7) to read: "7. Do you think the adoption of UEB as the standard braille code in the UK would benefit future braille readers in the UK and worldwide?", and "8. Would you personally like UEB to be adopted as the standard braille code in the UK?". A number of concerns were expressed about this suggested change: Bill Poole wondered if it would give BAUK a clear mandate to make a decision on adoption or rejection of UEB; and Richard West added that with Marion's first question the reader was being asked to second guess other people's views. Nevertheless, this formulation with two questions was agreed by a vote of 11 to 3.
Stephen Phippen said he was concerned that although UEB was meant to replace BAUK's technical codes (such as for maths, science and computing) very little had yet been done to assess whether this was a good idea, or whether users (e.g. in schools) would accept it. The current samples and questionnaire were no basis upon which to make such a decision. Marion Ripley said she would find it alarming if people who didn't know about technical braille would in effect be deciding upon it. Stephen Phippen agreed. Marion asked why we couldn't adopt UEB for literary braille, but retain our technical codes. Bill Poole replied that one reason was that signs within UEB would clash with those in our technical codes, and suggested that a document could perhaps be written outlining the pros and cons. Stephen Phippen suggested that a meeting of BAUK's Joint Technical Committee be held to examine this whole issue. We could also have some parallel technical samples giving the same text in UEB and UK braille so as to highlight the differences. Richard West asked if we could produce such samples that could be used as an extension to the existing UEB samples pack. Stephen Phippen replied that we could; we could explicitly say in the current questionnaire that there is also a parallel consultation on technical braille. Bill Poole suggested we could still go ahead with the questionnaire, but now regarded as the first part of the consultation process: he thought we wouldn't be able to produce enough representative technical braille in time to use in conjunction with the existing questionnaire. Richard West would draft a preamble.
Following this discussion Bill Poole concluded that he now took the view that the current questionnaire is just the first stage of the UEB consultation, to be followed, if UEB passes this stage, by a technical code stage. Marion Ripley added that we would need to set ourselves a timescale for evaluating technical braille (though we wouldn't need to announce it in the questionnaire).
The discussion ended with agreement on accepting the questionnaire as amended, and on accepting the arrangements proposed by Richard West for processing the responses.
Action plan for UEB consultation:
Bill Poole said that there is an action plan for the UEB consultation, dealing with practical matters such as how to distribute the questionnaire. Richard West outlined necessary steps: First we needed to advertise the consultation process with a 150-200 word flyer, which should be in as many publications as possible. Second, there would be the consultation booklet itself, including the introduction, samples and questionnaire, with contact details. The publicity would be handled by others, e.g. the Production and Distribution group led by RNIB. However, it was important that the whole process is owned by BAUK, not by these other groups which we may subcontract to. Sarah Home said that the reason these other groups did get involved was to help us get things moving. As regards the timetable, Bill Poole said that questionnaires should be out by June, and returned by the end of September.
Lisa Jones mentioned that the Duxbury braille translation program can already produce UEB, and Braille Maker should be able to do so by the time of Sight Village.
6. ICEB General Assembly.
Bill Poole asked if there were specific items which people wanted to raise. With regard to UEB, Richard West said he would be interested in discussion on how to represent a visible space; and also asked whether it is mandatory in UEB to show bold font, etc. In replying Bill Poole said that he thought there should be a code maintenance committee to deal with such matters, and will ask for its existence to be legislated for. He will ask about the visible space, but said there was some disagreement on the typeform issue, and how different producers would implement it.
7. Merger talks with UKABP and COTIS.
Bill Poole said that BAUK will need to arrange an extra meeting in order to deal with this pressing matter. The current position is that we have agreed to continue merger talks, but not to a final outcome. The document from the solicitor who is handling the legal side will need significant attention from us for our reply. Richard West said that the paper work will need to be done by 16th May to allow for transcription and amendments to be made. It was agreed to try to find a suitable date before the end of April for this extra meeting.
The meeting closed.