Ross Trotter

I am Chairman of NADP, having previously been Vice Chairman. I was deafened by meningitis at the age of 15. My career was in librarianship, and I joined the British National Bibliography in 1967, which later became part of the British Library. I worked in London for many years, but my job was relocated to Yorkshire in 1989, and I have since then lived in Wetherby in Yorkshire, with constant (virtually weekly) forays by train to London and elsewhere. I took early retirement in 1999, but continued as Chairman of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals Dewey Decimal Classification Committee until 2007 and maintained close links with colleagues both in the UK and at the Library of Congress in Washington, which I have visited many times.

My interest in work for deaf people stems from the advances in telecommunications available to text users. I was involved in the first Voice Bureau Trial, which led to the Telephone Exchange for the Deaf and then Typetalk, now called Text Relay. I was Chair of the Typetalk Consumer Panel for nine years. I am also Secretary of TAG and was a member of the Ofcom Advisory Committee on Older and Disabled People until 2008. I attended the inaugural meeting of NADP in the 1980s since the first Chair, Alison Heath, worked with me at the British Library and was good at arm twisting, and I have been involved with it in various ways ever since.

My other major interest is Language Service Professionals (Lipspeakers, Speech to Text Reporters) and I was Chairman of the Signature (formerly CACDP) Access to Communication in English Registration Panel until the creation of the new National Register of Communication Professionals for Deaf People (NRCPD) and remain a member of the Professional Standards Panel and an Examiner. When not involved in meetings for all of these, or at work on the computer keeping up with them all, my interests are travel, reading, good food (especially seafood) and wine. Too much indulgence in the last of these can be blamed for lack of attention at times to any thing else!