Country Report UK – For consideration by the ICEB General Assembly May 2016 By Mandy White, Braille subject lead for UKAAF (UK Association for Accessible Formats) Introduction It has been a very busy time for UKAAF over the past two years with the majority of our work being based around finalising the implementation of Unified English Braille (UEB). The deadline for the change was the end of December 2015 and by and large this was achieved. This work is covered in much more depth in the paper on UK implementation being presented at the assembly. Other work includes looking at braille codes affected by the implementation of UEB such as chess and Welsh and also more general work, such as formatting and a physical standard for the braille cell. Structure UKAAF continues to run 3 braille working groups (coding, teaching and production) which meet every 2 months via teleconference. Each group has about 7 or 8 members. The UKAAF board also meets every 2 months, every other meeting is face to face. UKAAF has its AGM every year in June. UEB Over the past two years we have completed face to face UEB training for over 600 teachers and have worked with RNIB to provide a range of material to support long term braille users transferring across to UEB. RNIB continues to update various braille learning and reading schemes. UKAAF continues to provide a termly UEB update which highlights developments and new resources available in the code. The email list for people with queries about the code will also continue to be available. Clarifying the approach for maths and languages Two temporary working groups were set up for maths and language specialists to ensure that an agreed single method would
Country Report – UK For consideration by the ICEB General Assembly May 2016 By Mandy White, Braille subject lead for UKAAF (UK Association for Accessible Formats) Introduction It has been a very busy time for UKAAF over the past two years with the majority of our work being based around finalising the implementation of Unified English Braille (UEB). The deadline for the change was the end of December 2015 and by and large this was achieved. This work is covered in much more depth in the paper on UK implementation being presented at the assembly. Other work includes looking at braille codes affected by the implementation of UEB such as chess and Welsh and also more general work, such as formatting and a physical standard for the braille cell. Structure UKAAF continues to run 3 braille working groups (coding, teaching and production) which meet every 2 months via teleconference. Each group has about 7 or 8 members. The UKAAF board also meets every 2 months, every other meeting is face to face. UKAAF has its AGM every year in June. UEB Over the past two years we have completed face to face UEB training for over 600 teachers and have worked with RNIB to provide a range of material to support long term braille users transferring across to UEB. RNIB continues to update various braille learning and reading schemes. UKAAF continues to provide a termly UEB update which highlights developments and new resources available in the code. The email list for people with queries about the code will also continue to be available. Clarifying the approach for maths and languages Two temporary working groups were set up for maths and language specialists to ensure that an agreed single method would
2016-Country_Report_United_Kingdom.docx