Our chair Roger Firman takes a look back over a busy year for the Association, while also putting some markers down for the next 12 months
Good morning, Roger, hope you are well, and thanks for taking the time to talk to us on the UKAAF blog. We had a conversation about two months after you’d been elected as the new chair just really as the pandemic was kicking off, and none of us knew how this was going to work out. I remember you expressing at the time one of your concerns was how COVID was going to affect UKAAF members, but obviously as we all know, it’s affected so many, so many different people in many different ways. Looking back on the last 18 months, what do you think now?
I think some blind and partially sighted people have found this quite difficult. There was even a rather daft phase when members of the public, if they saw a blind person with a guide dog, would make the assumption that the guide dog would know about social distancing. Hard to believe now, that kind of lack of understanding, and lots of people have also been in social isolation situations.
But you know, Carina, overall, I think we’ve all been finding our way through. UKAAF used to do a lot of in-person meetings, for example, but all that went online: do we want to go back to in-person meetings? The answer is no, we don’t. And I don’t think that’s just the pandemic; COVID’s made people think about when do you really need to travel, when do you really need to have a real-world meet in this day and age? There is still value in in-person meetings, but not to the extent that we were all used to. So, I think it’s been a time of adaptation for all of us, in and out of our membership.
I’m not sure if you’re saying 2021 was a tough year for UKAAF, Roger?
To be honest, I wouldn’t say it was. We all had to work in different ways, but we had our second online AGM meeting in June, and I think most people would say that was a success, for example. I think we fared pretty well, though we’re not complacent about things by any means—we know we can always do better, but I would say it’s been a pretty, pretty successful year.
Well said. When I last formally interviewed you, you obviously had a set of targets for both yourself and the Association. What grade are you giving yourself?
[Laughs] Absolutely, I remember when we last spoke like this, there were a fair few things I wanted to get done, in terms of building membership, deepening and forging new partnerships and new ways of communicating our message! Well, as you say, what’s the verdict? Here at the end of 2021, we have been able to attract new members, thank goodness, and we’ve also been answering a regular stream of inquiries relating to how materials can be produced in accessible formats. We’ve also done a lot of pointing people to relevant documentation on the UKAAF website, but also further afield; we’re perfectly happy to say this is our documentation, but for this particular aspect, you might have to go and look at a British standard, what have you. I think it’s rather gratifying that people are coming more and more frequently to UKAAF to ask about how we can do this, how can we produce that? Sometimes, it’s been big organisations, other times it’s been individuals saying, I’m thinking of producing such and such a thing, can you help me on how to do it, or where do I need to go? So, it’s a whole mix, and we’ve been glad to help.
OK, that’s the first ‘target’, membership and awareness. How did we do on the others?
Another area we spoke about was partnerships, and we’ve definitely been moving on with that. Here, what we wanted to try and do was to see whether there were organisations doing similar work to us. One partnership we have developed is one with an organisation in Australia and New Zealand, the Round Table on Information Access for People With Print Disabilities, Inc. Its aims and objectives are very similar to ours, so what we wanted to do was to see whether it would save us doing some work because they’re doing it, or they may do things in different ways which will complement each other’s work. Now, we have regular meetings once we’ve sorted out the time difference between the UK and Australia, and earlier this year in May they had an online conference, and I am delighted to say they invited me to do a presentation about UKAAF there.
So, we meet regularly, we discuss things, and it’s proving extremely useful. Another important partnership thing we have done recently was our work on National Braille Week, an event organised by Sight Scotland, but we made some contribution to it. And also, there was another event which we were involved in, a ‘lunch and learn’ session at TechShare Pro 2021 hosted by AbilityNet. Its remit is really tech, so we were looking at QR codes and related technologies, but we ended up talking to the great guys at NaviLens who are doing some really interesting work, and I think there will be some interesting things arising from that meeting, and I think wearables might play more and more of a role in all of our futures, actually. In any case, there was genuine interest from attendees and people wanting to know more, so we’ll be continuing to help to promote or spread the word or keep in touch and see how all that develops.
Great to hear. How did we do on webinars?
Yes, that is quite an interesting one. Webinars were kind of coming out of your ears pre-pandemic, and then there have been so many during Lockdown, so we had a think to see where can we really add value, and the answer’s yes, we think we can, so from January 2022, we are going to run a monthly webinar, usually on the first Tuesday of the month—rather conveniently, by the way, that first Tuesday in January happens to be World Braille Day, so braille will definitely be the theme that day.
Interesting! What do you see the format being?
They’re going to be around lunchtime and shorter rather than longer. Sometimes it will be about a particular format, or something related to a particular format, and other times it will be a bit wider than that—for instance, somebody who’s done some particularly interesting work in the area of disability which can have an impact on blind and partially sighted people, say. Also, perhaps how people have become involved with particular aspects of UKAAF through their work; I want it to be reasonably broad, and so, hopefully, it will be interesting.
That seems like a good segue to talk about UKAAF in 2022. What would you like to be able to say we’ve achieved, if I talk to you again this time next year?
That’s very clear to me. 2022 must be about us getting involved more in the mainstream. I think that’s really, really important. The more that you can get into the mainstream, the more provision of materials in accessible formats is not seen as something special, it’s just what happens. We’re a long way from that, but I think, slowly, more and more people are getting the idea that if they build in accessibility right from the word go, it’s not necessarily difficult but just about having things in place to enable you to do it. And that if they do, it’s going to broaden their consumer base and their audience, they are to be more accessible and it’s getting accessible formats more and more into where they need to be.
To keep that momentum and building awareness going, I’d like us to be progressing on putting alternate and accessible formats into mainstream and moving forward with that. I also think that it’s key to extend our partnerships out more too, e.g., increasing our input to other organisations in, say, the world of dyslexia, where we think we can help them, and they can probably help us.
We’ve got more to do in that field, yes. But we are looking at the gaps that we think exist in what we currently provide and will do something about filling them.
Excellent set of goals for us all there, Roger. Finally, I recently spoke with Jeff Mills from the board and one of the questions I asked him, and got a very interesting answer to, actually, was will UKAAF ever be able to close its doors—will there come a point where we’re not needed? What’s your view as Chairman of UKAAF on that?
[Pause] It would be hard to get to that point. It’s not easy. But I don’t think that is our goal anyway. Technology keeps progressing and changing, and when it does that can throw up new accessibility problems. Our goal, therefore, should be to make the provision of documents in alternative formats to be easily achievable. I think there’ll always be a need for a UKAAF to give advice, because needs will change. And what people need might also change; they might want things in a different way, so we’ve got to be responsive to that and work with others, either in the specialist sectors or in the world at large, to make all this happen much more easily. Plus, get away from anyone feeling that this accessibility ‘stuff’ is too difficult to do!
Thank you for your time, Roger, much appreciated. Here’s to a strong year for UKAAF on that note.
Interview by Carina Birt
UKAAF UK PR Officer
Roger Firman was appointed as UKAAF’s Chair in 2020, taking over from Richard West who had been serving in that role since 2014. He is also Chief Executive of Golden Chord, a business dedicated to providing a high-quality personalised transcription service for customers who require music, music-related and other materials in braille.
