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Conference and AGM 2008
The NADP Conference and AGM was held on Saturday May 31 2008 in Birmingham; the theme was Audiology.
A report will appear here as soon as possible. The Annual Report and Accounts for year ending 31
December 2007 can be seen here.
Conference and AGM 2007
A report by Norah Clewes
About 60 members and guests attended the 2007 Annual Conference held at the Charity Centre, Stephenson
Way, London, on June 23. This is the third time we have used the centre, which is close to Euston Station.
It has an excellent conference room and very pleasant and helpful staff. There may be slight confusion
with the refreshments served in the basement and the conference on first floor leading to quite a lot of
upping and downing by the lift or stairs but we all find our way about in the end.
Suzie Maine and
daughter Emma (taking a day off from swotting for A levels) looked after registration with a revived
system this year of using small stickers added to the name badges to show whether deafened, hard of
hearing or hearing and first timer. This helped a lot with communication between those present.
Vice-Chairman, Ross Trotter, opened the meeting in place of Heather Jackson. He explained that Heather
has been diagnosed with cancer and was unable to attend and invited everyone to sign a card for Heather
to send our best wishes to her. (Editor's note - since this report was written Heather lost her battle
with cancer and died on 14 August 2007.)
Hon. Secretary, Paul Tomlinson, then gave a short introduction to
the theme of the morning session, which was the Disability Equality Duty (DED). DED applies to all public
bodies, such as the NHS, local government, school governing boards, and many other organisations that
impact on our daily life. This duty to provide equal access is in addition to the DDA.
Louise
Harrington, Deputy Head of HR at Hertfordshire County Council, then gave a talk about what her council is
doing for access for those with disabilities. In the following Q and A session one young member brought
applause when she asked about door entry phones used in offices where there is no reception desk. These
really are an obstacle to deaf people and Louise noted that point.
This was followed by a talk by
Margaret Vartanian from the Office of Government Commerce (OGC) which deals with government purchasing and
procurement. Margaret is working on equality issues in the OGC. After her talk Ross pointed out the
importance of the huge purchasing power of government procurement for deaf people because of its influence
in providing accessible equipment. Ross thanked both speakers and said we were grateful that Margaret had
volunteered to speak whereas no one from the vast Department of Work and Pensions was willing to give up
their time on a Saturday in London!
Before lunch we fitted in a brief AGM which concluded with the
presentation of the Gifford Hardy Trophy by Gifford's daughter, Janine Burgess, to Derek Trayler for his
Network article (fantasy?) "Who would run the Hearing Dogs' Magazine?"
We had nearly an hour this
year for the buffet lunch but the time still went very quickly with chatting to old friends that we only
see once a year, and making new ones as we put a face to the names in Network and the email group.
The afternoon session started with an update from Ross on the Access to Communication in English (ACE)
campaign, a campaign co-ordinated by the United Kingdom Council on Deafness that NADP is supporting. He
said the government had provided £1.5 million to train BSL interpreters whilst ignoring the need for
Language Service Professionals such as speech to text reporters and lipspeakers for the far greater
numbers of deafened and hard of hearing people in the UK. This is something we are trying to remedy in
the future.
Tabitha Allum, Chief Executive of STAGETEXT, then gave a presentation on the latest
news on theatre captioning. As well as providing captions at various venues STAGETEXT is now providing
advice and help to groups of theatres to provide their own captioning. It makes sense for groups to share
the equipment and STAGETEXT are training more operators for them.
In the final session we had a
talk by Karen Brennan, wife of EC member Peter Brennan. Peter was suddenly deafened from a virus when on
a business trip in Northern Ireland five years ago. Karen talked about the problems of adjusting their
family relationships to a newly deafened person and then again more adjustments when Peter had his
cochlear implant two years later. Karen had a light-hearted take on some of their problems but finished
with some serious points about the needs of deafened people in a hearing society.
Derek Trayler
finished the day with a talk on his experience of being deafened five years ago after a life with perfect
hearing. We applauded him and Vivienne who had enjoyed their Golden Wedding Anniversary the day before
the meeting. Derek's usual humorous comments on his life with his Hearing Wife sent us all home with a
smile on our faces that afternoon.
Perhaps the best way to finish is with a quote from Lorraine
Gailey, the Director of the LINK Centre for Deafened People, who wrote afterwards to say "Can I take this
opportunity to congratulate you formally on an excellent Conference last week? The balance of topics was
very well thought out, and the content was good. The two spouses were absolutely superb, weren't they!!
Karen spoke the truth as it is for her, and for so very many partners, and she spoke with affection and
warmth rather than hostility or bitterness. Deafness as we know seriously affects EVERYONE in the
family - easy to say, sometimes hard to accept that it really does apply to your own life."
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We are grateful to Awards for All
for funding to support this conference
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