The Accessible Friends Network
Featuring TAFN Publicity and Members in the News, in date order through the year.
1) In January 2009 we made recordings of all of Audrey Tonge's "Agony Aunt" feature programmes with Jill Daley from RNIB Insight Radio, available on the TAFN Website.
Visit the audio page, where you can listen to these audio recordings in MP3 format
2) In March 2009 TAFN webmaster Leon Gilbert and partner attended a special Louis Braille BiCentenary Event at the Science Musem in London. The Guest speakers were Sir Colin Low Chairman of RNIB and David Blunkett MP, who is pictured below.
Leon Writes: "This occasion was an enjoyable and fascinating evening, not only were both David Blunkett and Colin Low's speeches excellent but a very professional audio presentation about the importance of Braille was played also. There were historical braille machines on display, alongside some examples of 19th Century braille books which had been punched completely by hand, one dot at a time. I believe one of them had been done by Thomas Armitage and had taken years.
The champagne and canape's were first class and the whole event against the backdrop of the amazing Science Museum was truly a one off! I did quite a bit of networking and talked to a few people there about TAFN. And am pleased to say that this has already led to one new member joining the TAFN network".
Visit the RNIB website for more information about this year's Louis Braille BiCentenary events
3) In March 2009 our sharp shooting secretary Amanda Burt, was presented with a postal league award at the national Blind Rifle Shooting awards ceremony in Wolverhampton, for her first class performance as a blind markswoman!
Watch a Youtube video of the ceremony featuring Amanda
Well done Amanda! From all your friends at TAFN.
4) In April 2009 TAFN member Jim Welch & Blind Life in Durham featured in an article in The Northern Echo about Kurling.
Jim's team are headed for the 2009 Kurling World Championships, and we wish them every success!
Visit the Blind Life in Durham website
5) TAFN member Jacqui Glynn featured in the Hounslow Chronicle after being refused access to a shop with her guide dog.
Read the Hounslow Chronicle article published April 24th, "Brentford shop turns away woman with guide dog"
We wish Jacqui - and Benson - every success in this case, which is an example of the prejudice that Guide Dog owners still experience often, despite the disabillity discrimination act.
Visit the official Guide Dogs website via this link
Good luck Jacqui!
6) TAFN member Jon Richards took part in a Guide Dogs demonstration against Mayor Boris Johnson's plans to introduce shared spaces schemes, at City Hall in central London
Visit the Guide Dogs for the Blind Associations "SAY NO TO SHARED STREETS" campaign website
Well done Jon!
7) TAFN (The Accessible Friends Network) submitted an extract to the RNIB Techshare conference, about their accessible VoIP conferencing using V I P Communicator 2. This extract was accepted!
This means that RNIB thought TAFN was good enough to do a presentation, representing recognition! Thanks R N I B
Read the TAFN VIP Communicator 2 Techshare Abstract
8) TAFN Member Jim Welch drove a Lamborghini sports car at 104mph, despite being totally blind and a wheelchair user.
Read the press article about the event, from The Northern Echo, dated 2nd September 2009
Visit the Blind Life in Durham website
Nice one Jim!
9) TAFN Member Carol Forrester featured on BBC In Touch, the BBC's major programme for blind and visually impaired people, about the BBC's recent introduction of audio description on the BBC I player.
Listen to a recording of the BBC In touch programme, originally broadcast Tuesday 1st September.
(Duration 20 minutes, also includes VIP Dave Kent interviewing a blind guerilla gardener!)
Visit the BBC iPlayer's new Audio Described programmes page
Well done Carol!
10) "The Potting Shed" is a new event hosted live on the TAFN server for blind and visually impaired gardeners, hosted by Elisabeth Standen. Information about the Potting Shed event and TAFN itself was featured in the Summer 2009 issue of "Come Gardening", the audio magazine of the National Blind Gardeners Club.
Please note that this recording is copyright THRIVE, a national accessible gardening organisation.
Thanks Elisabeth!
11) The Accessible Friends Network has won an Access IT 2009 Good Practice Label award, in the category ACCESS-IT@Home, which recognises an ICT based project, product or service that advances independent living for people with disabilities.
This is fantastic news for our organisation as these awards are organised through AbilityNet, a major UK disability technology organisation, and E-ISOTIS, a pan-European organisation focussed on Assistive Technology.
The awards ceremony itself was held at Microsoft HQ in Victoria, London on 24th September and Leon Gilbert, TAFN Webmaster and Co-founder attended. Leon writes:
"Although TAFN was a runner up in these awards and not an actual winner, this was still a very positive achievement for The Accessible Friends Network. The awards themselves were very prestigious, and some major organisations were among the actual winners, including Robobraille from Denmark, Accessible Twitter, and a Greek organisation which has trained blind & VI people to gain the ECDL qualification. The actual winner in the category TAFN entered into, was the BBC iPlayer! All the presentations at the awards were excellent, especially that by Robin Christopherson from AbilityNet, who is a guide dog owner and screen reader user. Robin demonstrated some of the issues faced by blind computer users to the conference in a first class way, including showing the excellent WebVisum addon for Mozilla Firefox in action.
This was a good opportunity to network and though we were only runners up, and I sincerely hope that this small achievement leads to further publicity and growth, for The Accessible Friends Network.
LINKS
Well done TAFN! Our thanks to the organisers & Congrats to the winners of the Access IT 2009 awards.
We are pleased to announce that TAFN exhibited in the main hall at Sight Village London, a major event for blind people, held at Kensington Town Hall on November 11th. Webmaster Leon Gilbert along with Jacqui G and Brian C, both with their guide dogs, manned the stall for the day, and people visiting our stand were able to have all their questions answered as well as take part in a live demonstration of our Voice Chat technology. A number of TAFN members attended virtually from various home locations, not only across the UK but also from The Netherlands, Australia and South Africa. Online events were also organised on the server by TAFN event hosts, to ensure that visitors to the conference got a good taster of what goes on at TAFN.
We had some very positive feedback from this experience, and all of our publicity materials were taken away, either by blind people or those people that support them such as mobility officers and sensory services team workers. A number of people got to talk to TAFN members via a laptop connected live over the internet to our server, and they all enjoyed this.
Thanks to all the volunteers who helped and everyone who visited our stand at the show. This was only the second time we have gone live from a V I Conference and we hope to do this even more during 2010!
Visit the main Sight Village London website
Well done Ayesha!
14) SAD NEWS. TAFN member Ted O'Dwyer has sadly passed away.
We regret to announce the sad passing away in December 2009 of a much loved and respected member of TAFN, Ted O'Dwyer.
Ted was legendary at TAFN for his delightful and caring nature, and fantastic sense of humour. His passing was a shock many members of our online community, where Ted had many friends. A minute's silence was observed in honour of Ted at our 2009 Christmas party on December 19th, and we hope to do a more permanent online memorial to Ted soon. In the meantime, the whole of The Accessible Friends Network, offers it's sincerest condolences to all of Ted's family and friends.
Visit the TAFN website memorial to Ted
15) TAFN member Trevor Franklin put a word in for TAFN in RNIB's Vision Magazine.
Our previous "members in the news" pages, have now been split up to a separate page for each year:-
2008 TAFN Members in the News
2007 TAFN Members in The News
2006
TAFN Members in the News
2005 and earlier TAFN
Members in The News
There's so much happening across the TAFN network nowadays that's it's a constant challenge keeping our website up to date with it all!! Please do send your links and articles in.
In case you haven't tried it yet, and are a VIP please do remember to try the TAFN Communicator Voice Chat server.
VIP's from across the UK are networking online, sharing their talents and interests, and supporting eachother through accessible teamwork. Thanks to everyone who has contributed to the site so far.
We welcome audio clips, technical tips, game reviews, creative writing, jokes, or even pictures. Anything you think that our website visitors may like! Thanks to all the real accessible friends out there, it's you doing your bit that's made our little part of the internet the great place that it is. & If you're new here why not give TAFN a try? We look forward to talking with you online!
TAFN - The Accessible Friends Network - is a U K-wide voluntary group set up to improve the quality of life by and for blind & visually impaired people and their partners, via internet voice conferencing. Welcome to our website!
This page & all pages at www.tafn.org.uk copyright The Accessible Friends Network and it's individual members 2003-2010. All rights reserved. TAFN is a UK Registered Charity No. 1108043. The majority of our activities take place via Accessible Private VoIP Conferencing. To contact T A F N please Email us. Or why not Find out even more about TAFN via this link.
Thanks for visiting!