| About St. Joseph's |
Mar 23, 2009
AHEAD Report. Statement from NBPC and St. Josephs. July 2008
St. Joseph’s / NBPC acknowledge mention of the NBPC’s services in the recently published report “Seeing Ahead”, as launched by AHEAD on 19.06.08.
Our services strongly promote and support Braille literacy and the NBPC is the only National Irish Agency to provide transcriptions of textbooks in Braille and other alternative formats accessible by children with a visual impairment.
The NBPC was set up in 2000, producing 32 transcriptions for 17 clients. Between 2006 and 2008 the centre has experienced an unprecedented increase in client numbers, now providing services to 354 clients and producing 951 transcriptions in 06/07 and so far 1333 in 07/08.
Unfortunately, the authors of the report did not revisit the NBPC after an initial short visit on 18.09.06 and did not verify, double-check or update any information given to them on that only occasion by NBPC. There was also no attempt made to clarify statements other sources related to them.
This leads to wrong and misleading statements within the report, as follows:
The wrong assumption that the NBPC would only deliver a quarter or a half of a book to a student (in total). This is untrue.
All deductions made in the report which are based on this wrong assumption.
A “coordinated or systematic approach” is repeatedly called for in the report, unfortunately without any indication what this approach might look like. The NBPC has a good working relationship with colleagues from other service providers, and understands that competencies are spread in such a way that services are not being duplicated and that service users can receive the best spread of products across agencies.
Large print is mentioned only once in the report and there is also no consideration given to the actual role text files / e-files / Daisy can play in conjunction with Braille. Seeing that of the currently 354 clients of the NBPC, about 300 are large print users and 30 braille users, this is astonishing, as the report’s title suggests that it would report on the situation of Blind AND Vision Impaired Students.
While we fully appreciate and support scientific and verifiable research in the area of Braille literacy, we have to regrettably observe that the high standards we follow in our day-to-day work have not been applied to the study, which wrongly reports on our work.
Our services strongly promote and support Braille literacy and the NBPC is the only National Irish Agency to provide transcriptions of textbooks in Braille and other alternative formats accessible by children with a visual impairment.
The NBPC was set up in 2000, producing 32 transcriptions for 17 clients. Between 2006 and 2008 the centre has experienced an unprecedented increase in client numbers, now providing services to 354 clients and producing 951 transcriptions in 06/07 and so far 1333 in 07/08.
Unfortunately, the authors of the report did not revisit the NBPC after an initial short visit on 18.09.06 and did not verify, double-check or update any information given to them on that only occasion by NBPC. There was also no attempt made to clarify statements other sources related to them.
This leads to wrong and misleading statements within the report, as follows:
The wrong assumption that the NBPC would only deliver a quarter or a half of a book to a student (in total). This is untrue.
All deductions made in the report which are based on this wrong assumption.
A “coordinated or systematic approach” is repeatedly called for in the report, unfortunately without any indication what this approach might look like. The NBPC has a good working relationship with colleagues from other service providers, and understands that competencies are spread in such a way that services are not being duplicated and that service users can receive the best spread of products across agencies.
Large print is mentioned only once in the report and there is also no consideration given to the actual role text files / e-files / Daisy can play in conjunction with Braille. Seeing that of the currently 354 clients of the NBPC, about 300 are large print users and 30 braille users, this is astonishing, as the report’s title suggests that it would report on the situation of Blind AND Vision Impaired Students.
While we fully appreciate and support scientific and verifiable research in the area of Braille literacy, we have to regrettably observe that the high standards we follow in our day-to-day work have not been applied to the study, which wrongly reports on our work.
