Record of proceedings of the Annual General Meeting 2003

Saturday May 17, 2003 - the National Council for the Blind, at 1.30 PM

ADDRESS OF WELCOME

The Chairman, Michael Lavin welcomed all to the 2003 Annual General Meeting of VICS.

APOLOGIES

Apologies were received from: Michael Brown, Tom ONeill, Suzanne Dowd, Joe Bollard, Derry Lawlor, Mike Meaney, Brian Manning, Joan Ann Brosnan and Paul Traynor. An apology was also received from Mary Hannifan, Minister responsible for the Information Technology Commission, who had been invited to attend the AGM.

MINUTES OF 2002 AGM

The minutes of the 2002 Annual General Meeting were adopted.

CHAIRMANS REPORT

VICS Committee:

The Committee had met on a regular basis mostly at the Royal Dublin Hotel. There had been two Saturday meetings to facilitate the attendance of country members. Arising from last years AGM, Three working groups were established as follows: Lobby Group, Draft Constitution and Munster Branch. Derry Lawlor had been co-opted to the Committee to represent the Lobby Working Group. The Chairman wished to thank all those who had worked on the various Committees throughout the year.

Year of the Disabled:

Having consulted with the members through the mailing list, the Committee had decided to adopt an initiative to have educational material for students made available in electronic format, either on CD-ROM or via the internet. It was Envisaged that the incoming Committee would establish a sub-Committee to pursue this goal.

Mailing list:

The mailing list continued to provide a useful service and numbers had grown to about 108.

Training:

Gus and Paula Dorrington continued to provide training at Colaiste Oide in Finglas, with ten students doing ECDL and as many more doing pre-ECDL training. Paula and Gus also had been involved in advising on accessibility issues in relation to syllabus 4, the latest version of ECDL. In addition, there was the possibility of running summer courses at Colaiste Oide for beginners. This might be done with funding from the ACE Project.

Sight Village:

A group representing VICS had attended this technology display in Bermingham in mid July and had returned with much valuable information and interviews for Infovics.

Website:

The VICS web site had been completely rebuilt by Tony Murray and a new logo, designed by Anne Kelly, had been included. VICS was also looking at the possibility of a new domain name for the web site which would mean a shorter address but this would have to be paid for.

Lobby Working Group:

This Group was set up as a result of a recommendation in the consultation document. The Group had selected a number of areas for their attention but in the nature of things, progress was slow. However, one important achievement during the year had been the production of a totally accessible phone book on CD by a Company called Compass. The Chairman recognised the work done by Bert Brown in testing the CD and giving advise to Compass.

Web site testing:

VICS had received a number of requests for this service during the year. Michael was concerned that any work done in the name of VICS should be up to standard and felt that the incoming Committee should look at this issue.

Other projects:

Vital, the ACE Project and Train the Trainers were a number of initiatives to which VICS had sent representatives during the year.

Vital was attended by Noel Redmond, Tim Culhane and Michael Lavin but unfortunately it was no longer functioning.

Michael had also attended meetings of the ACE Project Which had recently organised a very successful Open Day in Kilkenny. The theme of the Open Day was IT at the heart of your Community. It involved demonstrations of E-mail, E-banking and the Irish Times downloaded and read as a HTML document.

VICS had an involvement in the training the Trainers project, a series of meetings organised by Stuart Lawler at which Michael had attended. The most recent of these had been attended by Steve Plumbton of the British Computer Association of the Blind (BCAB) to talk about their scheme of certified training.

VICS also had a meeting with Frank Cronin of the Irish Computer Society. He said that VICS could use the ICS conference centre and public relations facilities in the new combined ICS/ECDL premises i Mount Street. There was also the possibility of getting access to used PCs.

Draft constitution:

Michael thanked Anne and Martin Kelly and Philip Doyle for drafting the new constitution.

Expert Group:

The Expert Group, which had ten members, had recently been reconstructed and was making good progress.

Munster Branch:

This sub-committee had so far failed to get off the ground mainly due to the fact that Michael Meaney, the Leader, had health problems.

Conclusion:

The Chairman felt that VICS should engage the help of sighted individuals of a similar interest who would assist the Committee with tasks such as reading documents. He also considered that more responsibility should be devolved to the members. In the long term, he felt that VICS would have to look to its funding if it is to be in a position to take on major projects.

Thanks:

The Chairman delivered an official vote of thanks to the following:

The outgoing VICS committee
Eamonn O'Connor for the production of Infovics
NCBI for the use of the premises
Liam Duke and the Drumcondra Project
Owen ONeill and his Kilkenny colleagues
Members of the Working Groups
Those who tested web sites
The mailing list Moderators
Members of the ACE Project
The sighted helpers

The Chairmans report was approved.

TREASURERS REPORT

Liam Duke read the financial statement on behalf of the Treasurer, Paula Dorrington, which showed a balance of 1153.59. Gus Dorrington explained that VICS had applied for a Government grant, in connection with the Year of the Disabled, to upgrade the web site but this had been turned down. The Treasurers report was approved.

ADOPTION OF NEW CONSTITUTION

The Chairman proposed that the draft constitution be taken as a complete document and if adopted, amendments could be brought at the next AGM. If the draft was rejected, a general meeting would be held in the autumn to consider an amended version. Tom Langan asked if the draft had been seen by a legal expert to ensure that it was sound. The Chairman said that it had been moddeled on other constitutions and the general opinion was that this was sufficient. The constitution was adopted by a vote of 30 for and 2 against.

ELECTION OF NEW COMMITTEE

The Chairman explained that under the new constitution there would be an election for: Chairman, Vice-Chairman, Secretary, Treasurer and up to five Committee members.

The following were elected:

Chairman: Michael Lavin;
Vice-Chairman: Gus Dorrington;
Secretary: Philip Doyle;
Treasurer: Paula Dorrington.
Committee members: Bert Brown, Mike Meaney, Eamonn OConnor,Tony Murray and Tim Culhane.

OPEN FORUM

The Chairman asked the Leaders of some of the Working Groups to speak briefly about there area of responsibility:

Noel Redmond of the Expert Group explained that Cearbhall OMeadhra Had procured ten copies of Windows XP from Microsoft and the Group now proposed to look at other types of software apart from Microsoft.

Martin Kelly explained that the Constitution Group had met on only one occasion, the main work being done via email.

In the absence of Derry Lawlor, Stuart Lawler spoke for the Lobby Group which had met on four occasions. Stuart had prepared a written report explaining that they had met with Golden Pages to seek to have their online directory made more accessible but that progress was slow. They were also working on web site accessibility.

Tom Langan expressed the wish that VICS hold an Open Day in the west of Ireland and offered to liase with the Committee to that end. Noreen Meagher was of a similar view for the south.

Dr. Bryn Holmes then gave a very interesting talk explaining about the ACE Project and how it came about. ACE is a combined effort involving Trinity College, the NCBI, her own Company, Inishnet, with VICS in an advisory capacity. ACE was looking at the idea of setting up an e-community, with e-business, e-learning, including ECDL. Its remit was for the southern and eastern regions. She also explained how she went about fund raising and how this might be useful to VICS.

ANY OTHER BUSINESS

Anne Kelly wondered if the Lobbying Group could do anything about the cost of using the internet. Martin OSullivan explained that there was a campaign called Ireland off-line which aimed to bring the cost down of going online.

Tony Murray said that the new VICS web site was ready and it should be put up in a few days. A domain name would cost under 80 a year and while the best names were already gone, vicsireland.org was still available.

Finally, the Chairman asked Des Kenny Chief Executive of the NCBI to formally close the meeting. This he did, after giving a short talk about developments in the technology area at NCBI, and promising further co-operation with VICS. The meeting concluded at 3.30 PM.

Philip Doyle