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The Newsletter of COTIS
The Confederation of Transcribed Information Services
To promote the provision of information in alternative formats to print
Editor - Linda Pearce, Email:
ontrack@cotis.org.uk .
Project Office, 67 High Street, Tarporley, Cheshire, CW6 ODP. Tel: 01829-733351
(Answerphone)
Reg Charity No: 299024 © Issue 50 - June 2005
TQAS by Wendy Davies, COTIS Chair
Calling all of you who record audio versions commercially (see later in this article for more information on what this covers): at last, the moment you have all been waiting for! As a COTIS member, you can be amongst the first to be assessed and hopefully awarded a
TQAS quality mark - and at a specially reduced price!
How many times have you longed for honest and impartial feedback on your transcriptions? For someone to confirm that you made the right choice... or perhaps suggest a better alternative?
How often have you bitten your tongue in frustration as a well-meaning but ill-informed contract negotiator insists on something which you know will only frustrate those listening to your recording? And wished you had some independent indication of your expertise in this area?
Now, TQAS offers the opportunity to have your transcriptions constructively assessed for all aspects of quality by a panel of independent blind and partially sighted users. This panel will systematically score your transcription against criteria defined by users as crucial to their effective use of the information.
As well as increasing the quality of your product, such an assessment will:
As COTIS members, you had an early preview of the assessment criteria and their allocated percentage of points in the January On Track, which also featured the overall COTIS Audio Standard.
You now have the opportunity to be amongst the first to acquire the business
benefit of an independent quality mark:
TQAS
Accreditation will undoubtedly soon become an essential qualification for those negotiating contracts for transcription work, so here's your chance to get ahead of the game - and at a specially reduced price for COTIS members (offer valid for 3 months only).
Application packs are available now from the COTIS office - please note that they will be sent out in 12 point print unless you request another font size or format. These packs give you all the information you will need to apply.
Meanwhile, what do we mean by 'commercial audio'? Any information recorded at the request of, and paid for by, the provider of that information. (For instance, service industry information, whether personalised such as utility or telecoms bills, or promotional such as Christmas catalogues or leisure promotions.) The 'commercial' category includes college promotional materials, although the recording of course content will come under the Academic Classification, which will follow shortly.
STOP PRESS: Braille equivalents of the COTIS audio standard and
questionnaires for
TQAS braille assessments are currently being developed by the
United Kingdom Association of Braille Producers (UKABP).
by Sheila Armstrong
In November 2004 I felt privileged to have the opportunity of joining a COTIS accreditation panel workshop. I wasn't so sure, though, when Wendy referred to me as "the spy in our midst." At the end, she did say I was a nice spy!
The idea was to see what COTIS was doing with the commercial audio accreditation questionnaire and take this information back to UKABP. So it's only fair to let you know what UKABP has been doing with all this top-level information...
Enthused by the workshop, and as I am now secretary of UKABP, I invited myself onto the already existing braille accreditation subgroup and started translating the audio questionnaire into braille terms. The subgroup consists of Marian Davis (whom you know), Craig McQueen (head of prison braille production for Inside Out Trust), Mandy Thompson (head of transcription at RNIB) and myself (braille transcription co-ordinator for Torch Trust). We have met three times this year, working hard to refine the questionnaire. There was a braille one from 2002, and we took the best from each document for a new version. We now plan to formulate a UKABP code of practice, equivalent to the COTIS guidelines for producers. We hope to complete this task by our AGM later this year.
In the coming months, UKABP is keen to plan training and workshops on faster and more efficient ways of formatting documents for transcription. We were very pleased at the warm reception at last October's UKABP conference. We are not able to run such an event annually, but hope to plan another in the not-too-distant future.
COTIS at ABAPSTAS Conference
by Linda Pearce, COTIS Committee
With the Transcription Quality Assessment Scheme for commercial work nearing its launch, COTIS was already being asked what plans it had for assessing the quality of recorded study material, particularly as used by students and teachers. As COTIS has maintained links with ABAPSTAS (Association of Blind and Partially Sighted Teachers and Students) and has had a representative on the COTIS committee for some time, it seemed appropriate to ask if COTIS could have a slot at their next conference. This would give COTIS the opportunity to explain the quality assessment scheme and to ask for input from people who use recordings of academic material for study and work purposes. The needs of end users form the basis for the criteria of assessment.
I, therefore, had the pleasure of spending a beautiful weekend at a hotel in Windermere run by Action for Blind People and attending the Saturday afternoon sessions of the conference. On a personal level, I gained a great deal of insight into the world of education as experienced by blind and partially sighted students and teachers. To further COTIS' work on the assessment scheme, I received valuable guidance on what delegates considered important for academic style recording. In addition, the conference felt it should take forward the issues with its membership and feed back to COTIS. We look forward to working closely with ABAPSTAS on this issue and thank the delegates at the conference for their warm welcome and enthusiastic contribution.
Retirement of ABAPSTAS Representative
by Wendy Davies, COTIS Chair
Sadly, we heard that Lisa Bhogal has had to withdraw from many of her commitments, including that of ABAPSTAS representative on the COTIS committee. Lisa has been a strong and forceful voice on behalf of all the groups of which she has knowledge and we will miss her very considerable contributions. However, as the saying goes, when one door closes... We are very glad to welcome David Taylor as the new representative. Our Chair, Wendy Davies, was particularly glad to have David on board at this time as she and David had worked together on the content of the current RNIB See It Right guides to tape, braille and electronic text.
David himself writes:
Hello, I am David Taylor, and I have taken over as ABAPSTAS representative on the COTIS committee. Lisa Bhogal had to resign due to personal circumstances, but I want to thank her for keeping us up to date with what COTIS has been doing for the past few years.
I joined ABAPSTAS some years ago and represented them on the Braille Authority for many years. I also worked at RNIB for a number of years. As part of that job, I worked closely with Wendy Davies on various aspects of standards and guidelines for alternative formats, and found the work very interesting.
Previously, I had been a student. I could not have managed my course but for RNIB's library services, and I was a heavy user of all sorts of tape and braille services. I needed to get through a lot of reading, so I quickly worked out what made a good recording, and was able to get my friends and tutors to read for me, and record in a way I could quickly use.
As time has gone on, I have started to use computers and would probably say that my preferred way of reading is a good HTML document, but I am very enthusiastic about Daisy as well. I now find compact cassettes very frustrating, as do many younger people, but they do still have value for a lot of people. I am very interested in making all transcription as easy to use as possible, and in new ways of doing that.
I hope that my experience of using different formats will help in developing standards and accreditation further for COTIS and for other blind and partially sighted people. I am open to new ideas, but quite fussy about what I like. I have seen a lot of progress over the years, but all too often still see people struggling with poor quality recordings, especially in the area of reading for leisure. I want reading to be as pleasurable and versatile an experience as it can be for blind and partially sighted people, and have long appreciated COTIS for the work that has been done. Now, I am looking forward to helping tackle the issues and make a real difference to people's lives.
My family and I still use a range of services, ranging from Calibre, RNIB Talking Books and other recordings to the things we get sent through the post, so we can see how they are doing right now too! I am very much looking forward to helping develop the accreditation for academic work, and hope ABAPSTAS members will play an active part in that. They seemed very enthusiastic when Linda Pearce attended our recent conference, so I think we will not find it hard to get their views.
I look forward to working with you all and meeting as many of you as possible, whether in person, or by phone or email.
by Wendy Davies, COTIS Chair
This alliance of 17 charities has been reviewing its strategy following a disappointing response from Tony Blair to the 31,293 Charters delivered to Downing Street on 28 February. You will recall that this said:
"Every day three million children and adults are denied the Right to Read just because they have a sight problem, dyslexia or a reading disability. A shocking 95 per cent of all books, magazines and other publications NEVER become available in large print, audio or braille. This discrimination must end. We need to act now. The Right to Read the same material, at the same time, at the same price must become a reality for three million people.
We the undersigned call on Government to:
We call on publishers, booksellers and libraries to:
" Tony Blair's letter is published in full on the RNIB Right to Read website, but it starts disappointingly.
"The Government fully supports the Campaign's aim of tackling discrimination against people with visual impairment. We are already targeting all available funds and developing specific initiatives to ensure this issue is addressed. I have attached an annex which sets out examples of the range of activities in this area, gives an indication of where our funds are currently targeted, and the level of the funding. You will see that significant resources are being provided and considerable progress is being made."
The letter then proceeds to tell us about every one of our hard-fought victories of the past, including legislation requiring schools to produce access strategies, e-learning initiatives, and the fact that there are links between the DfES SEN Inclusion website and the Reveal (sic) Database - which the letter kindly goes on to tell us "provides information about accessible resources, suppliers of accessible formats, descriptions of accessible formats, and links to other sources of information and best practice."
Polite words failed us at the time, so we resolved to respond after the election.
Meanwhile, we re-considered our overall strategy and our short term aims.
We have slightly re-formulated our main aim to read:
The Right to Read Campaign wants faster and routine provision of more books, magazines, newspapers and information in formats that can be read by visually impaired and print disabled people. The additional costs of these formats should not fall on charitable funds, or result in a higher price to the end user.
Or, in short:
The same book, at the same time, at the same price.
Our overall objectives remain the achievement of:
(a) Statutory funding to support production of more books and information in accessible formats, as is the case in many other countries.
The ground we hope to cover includes:
(b) Continuity of funding for Revealweb after March 2006
The current funding runs out in less than a year, and Revealweb will cease
unless further funding is found.
(c) Establishment of a national digital file repository
The dream is for a repository of electronic files in a standardised format into
which publishers automatically deposit every title and which can be accessed by
trusted partners. Amazingly good progress is currently being made in this area,
as RNIB indicates: "We believe that we are closer than ever to being
able to obtain files from publishers which might then be used to produce
accessible formats in a more efficient manner. Publishers seem willing to
deposit their files with a trusted intermediary, and RNIB is currently
examining how to further develop this idea. Files provided by publishers will
need to be transformed into a more useful format, and RNIB is also assessing
how this might be achieved so that all producers can benefit from this
considerable step forward in the provision of accessible information."
(d) Access to educational material for students
Much is being done and some students are well served. Too many others are not.
(d) Greater provision of alternative format reading material in public
libraries
We want to:
(e) UK copyright extension and international harmonisation.
Having made some advances in the UK for those with a physical reading
disability, we want to maintain pressure for the inclusion of other
disabilities, in particular dyslexia, and are looking for greater harmonisation
of international copyright laws.
(f) More accessible commercial and electronic reading material.
The digitisation of the publishing industry offers great opportunities both for
inclusion of VI needs in the standard commercial offerings and for the
production of a specialised alternative with only slight tweaking. R2R Alliance
members want to maximise those opportunities by looking particularly at:
Enough to keep us all busy for a while to come! We would really love to hear from you if you are involved in any of these areas and would like to report progress or particular issues of concern. Any comments made either to the Editor or through the COTIS website will get back to our Chair, Wendy Davies, who currently represents COTIS at Right to Read Alliance meetings. (Wendy was also a member of the small sub-group which drafted the revised strategy for consideration by the full group.)
Almost the hardest part of setting up a company is choosing the right name, and Audio Exchange hope they have at least given prospective clients and end users an idea of what they are about with theirs. The three directors, Tricia Williams, Susan Stedman and Robin Millard, have between them many years' experience in audio transcription as well as a wealth of knowledge in marketing and business matters.
Based in Heathfield, East Sussex - the home and inspiration to a number of similar businesses - Audio Exchange serves a range of High Street names from the worlds of sport, government, entertainment and retailing, which is something of a rarity for a small local business in such a rural area.
The digital studios, looked after by Technical Director Robin Millard, use up-to-date methods and systems and it is Robin's flair and understanding of the end users' needs that create Audio Exchange's special sound. His attention to detail turns recordings into 'productions', whilst his management of the recording artists is impeccable. The wealth of voices available has much to do with Audio Exchange's close proximity to Eastbourne and Brighton - both home to renowned repertory companies as well as a couple of nearby quality radio stations! He proudly boasts he can find the right voice for any material.
Recordings are duplicated onto tape or CD, depending upon the clients' wishes and the identified market. Where possible, Audio Exchange guide their clients to a mixed situation, as it has found those listeners brave enough to try modern technology have reaped the benefit and found moving from track to track on a CD easier than fast forwarding a tape.
In addition to digital recording, Audio Exchange has invested in a digital graphics studio so they are able to create the necessary artwork or handle the clients' own. Tape or CD identification is important to the listener whilst good graphics impress future clients, and likewise for their braille and large print documents, all professionally finished, with high quality printed and embossed covers for ease of identification by VIPs and sighted people alike.
In one of the many roles which directors of small companies have to take on, the Sales Team, Tricia Williams and Susan Stedman, have built up the business by forming good working relationships with their clients. A core of regulars form the mainstay of the business and they now find these clients turn to them for guidance and advice on any number of disability issues. A satisfied client is the best advertisement and a number of high profile recommendations has resulted in more work for this growing company.
A variety of interests and hobbies occupy what little spare time the small business operators have: Tricia and her family are renovating a Sussex barn and outbuildings, Robin is a keen member of a Brighton based drum band, whilst Susan was recently elected a District Councillor and has just about enough time left to care for her two rescued ponies.
If you want a job done well, ask busy people!
by Mike Wood, Chairman
Talking News Federation (TNF, registered charity number 110894) is the new national charity of and for talking newspapers and magazines throughout the UK.
I am pleased to report that the formalities of the restructuring agreed at the Annual General Meeting of the Talking Newspaper Association of the United Kingdom (TNAUK) in September 2004 are now complete and 1 April 2005 marked the inauguration of TNF.
TNF aims to provide advice, information and support, and will advocate for talking newspapers/magazines (TNs/TMs) on national issues of concern when required.
At present we have 300 members, the majority having transferred from TNAUK, but we are pleased to announce around 20 totally new members.
The committee of nine, all from local talking newspapers, are all working in a voluntary capacity. Each member has a particular area of expertise and collectively TNF is confident of being able to resolve issues essential to the continuation of local TNs producing a quality service to blind and visually impaired people.
Enquiries can be dealt with in several ways:
Phone: 0871 226 5506 (this is a national rate charge, but we will call you
back if you require)
Email: enquiries@tnf.org.uk
Post: see address at end of this article
Website: www.tnf.org.uk
Websites are now one of the most practical sources for information, and TNF has now launched a very comprehensive site, which we hope will be the first port of call for many people. It will be updated frequently with both national notices and relevant information passed on to us by local TNs/TMs. At present the entire site allows free access to any interested parties, but this will change later this year when restricted areas will need a membership password for accessibility.
Insurance Scheme
TNF will administer the group insurance scheme under the same conditions as TNAUK. It is only available to TNF members.
TN Network is the new magazine of TNF with the first issue being launched at the end of May/beginning of June - not the glossy affair of NTNN, but still full of practical items, regular features and hopefully news from your TN/TM.
Regional/Local Conferences can be an excellent starting place for sharing information with groups close by and the committee are willing and able to assist you with organising such an event.
Our first Annual National Conference will be held in the Britannia Wigan Hotel in Standish, Lancashire, on 23-25 September 2005. Our keynote speaker and one of our workshop presenters is Peter White, Radio 4's "In Touch" presenter and the BBC's Disability Affairs Correspondent. Peter Osborne (RNIB), Rowland Myers (Soundings Magazine) plus many exhibitors of recording related equipment and information (including COTIS) will be present throughout. If you are interested in attending, or receiving further information, please contact Ann Wood at mikewood@clara.co.uk or telephone 01793 729812.
TNAUK is now a separate charity which has registered as a member of TNF and will continue to share experience and knowledge with us. They operate a national recording service of talking newspapers and magazines on a subscription basis. Their trading company Talking Newspaper Enterprises Limited was established to provide alternative funding for the national recording centre. It operates a commercial transcription service and last year was launched under the new name of 'Soundtalking'.
Support is welcome to enable us to firmly establish our new charity, to promote success in our assistance to TNs and TMs, and to ensure blind and visually impaired people are aware of all the services available to them.
Meanwhile we thank the members of COTIS for giving their support and allowing us to provide this article for their magazine.
If you have any questions about this article or the restructuring of the two charities you are welcome to contact me.
Mike Wood (Chairman TNF)
Manor House
Lime Kiln
Wootton Bassett
Wiltshire
SN4 7AF
E-mail: chairman@tnf.org.uk
Phone: 0871 226 5506
Another Eyesight: Multi-Sensory Design in Context by Julia Ionides and Peter Howell, with contributions by friends, is out NOW. This book is about the innovative work carried out by the Dog Rose Trust. Further details and order forms are on our website: www.dogrose-trust.org.uk
by Linda Pearce, Editor
On Track brings to your attention details about equipment, materials and services that COTIS feels will be of interest to you. Please note that this is for your information only. COTIS is not endorsing them or making any recommendations. Equally, reviews are personal comments by the writers of the articles.
Please remember - if you would like to submit an article or send details of any forthcoming events which may be of interest to COTIS members, the latest dates by which material should reach the editor are:
5 October for October's issue,
6 January for January's issue and
1 May for May's issue.
© Written permission to use any On Track article or other COTIS
material to be obtained from
The COTIS Secretary, Project Office, 67 High Street, Tarporley,
Cheshire, CW6 0DP, tel: 01829-733351 (answerphone), or Email:
ontrack@cotis.org.uk .
or from the On Track editor.
COTIS, Project Office, 67 High Street, Tarporley, Cheshire, CW6 0DP, United Kingdom.
Telephone: +44 (0)1829 733351
Email: administrator@cotis.org.uk
COTIS President: Sir John A. Wall - Charity Number 299024
COTIS Web Site last updated 24th June 2005