Minutes of Annual General Meeting 2002

1. Chairman's report
2. adoption of minutes
3. Treasurer's Report
4. Sub-Committee report
5. notices of motion
6. election of new Committee
7. open forum

Chairman's Report

The Chairman thanked the outgoing committee for their support and help
during the year. The committee met on a regular basis at the Royal Dublin
Hotel. Six of the members attended regularly and three others less
frequently. The Chairman expressed the wish that those accepting nomination
to the new Committee would be fully committed to attending the meetings.

Open day:

During the year VICS had a very successful open day held in Kilkenny. It
included demonstrations of the internet, Word etc and it was very well
attended. It is hoped that something similar will be held in the early
Autumn, at a location outside of Dublin.

Infovics:

The VICS tape magazine is going well thanks to Liam Duke and
the staff of NCBI. Problems with recording quality have been largely
overcome but it would be nice to have more contributors to the tape as well
as feedback from listeners.

Mailing list:

The VICS mailing list which is being moderated by Philip Doyle and Ronan
McGuirk continues to flourish. The number of subscribers which stood at 50
a year ago, has now risen to 89. Some of these are non-members and the
Chairman expressed the wish that they would join VICS and contribute their
experience and knowledge to the Organisation. The list provides an
opportunity for those who are novices to gain knowledge from those who are
more experience. As the saying goes, there is no such thing as a silly
question, only silly answers!

training:

In Dublin, Gus and Paula Dorrington are continuing with their good work
providing ECDL training in Colaiste Oide. The Chairman also wished to
recognise the good work done by Toddy Carey, Mike Meaney and Bob Murphy, in
Kerry, Limerick and Sligo, who are attempting to fill the gap in training.
There was a need to provide such training for those in the work force and
VICS would hope to get involved in this. Some Telephonists in the Civil
Service had recently been recertified as Clerical Officers and would require
computer training to enable them to carry out alternative duties.

Site Village:

A group from the Committee went to the exhibition held at Queen Alexandra
College in Birmingham. The Chairman said the exhibition was probably the
best in Europe and the help provided was second to none. Paula and Gus
returned with lots of tapes and tutorials which were distributed at the open
day.

VICS consultation document:

The Chairman said he would like to recognise the work put in by Philip
Doyle, Noreen Meagher, Sabrina McKiernan, Mike Meaney, Paul Traynor and
Brian Manning in the production of this report, which would be discussed
later in the meeting.

VICS web site:

At the last AGM, it was agreed that the site should be reconstituted and the
Chairman said that he would like to thank all those who were involved in
this work. The site was now much slicker and had better links which are
more appropriate to our needs. The `site address is:
http://www.iol.ie/~vics

Eircom telephone directory:

the Chairman said that the downside of our activities during the year was
our failure to make any progress in having the Eircom CD made accessible for
visually impaired users.

Web site testing:

This is an area where VICS is getting more and more requests from the public
and commercial organisations to check sites for accessibility. The Chairman
considered that there should be a team of paid testers to do this work. He
noted that many public bodies are improving their sites which was a welcome
development.

Summing up his report, the Chairman observed that, for the future, VICS has
to keep a close watch on things. Developments relating to mobile phones and
ATM machines have serious implications for people with a visual impairment.
He stressed that we need to protect our rights under the law. People should
not be allowed to produce material that the entire population could not
access. For example, IBM are at present producing software which is
entirely inaccessible. He considered the biggest problem for VICS to be
complacency.

Finally, 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 O'Neill and The Kilkenny Branch of NCBI
• The VICS review sub-committee
• Those who tested web sites
• those who assisted beginners on the mailing list

adoption of minutes

The minutes of the previous Annual General Meeting, which had been
circulated via Infovics and the mailing list, were formally adopted.

Treasurer's Report

Liam Duke read the financial report on behalf of the Treasurer, Paula
Dorrington, which showed a balance of EUR906.58. C. O'Meadhra pointed out
that the books didn't fully reflect monies raised by the Organisation and
said that sponsors should receive full recognition from VICS. The Chairman
thanked Paula for her work in keeping the accounts, which were adopted.

Sub-Committee report

This arose on foot of a motion from last year's AGM which called for
a review to be carried out into how VICS is run and what improvements might
be made. The Chairman proposed taking the recommendations section by
section with Liam Duke reading. The main recommendation was that VICS
should have a constitution and most members felt that this was a good idea,
giving the Organisation a more structured approach. Two of the founding
members, R. McGuirk and C. O'Meadhra recalled that earlier on VICS had a
constitution which was being revised but the process was never completed.
As the document could no longer be found, it was felt it would be best to
forget about it. C. O'Meadhra Offered to provide a copy of the Institute of
Design and Disability constitution which he felt would make a suitable model
to follow and this was welcomed. Another recommendation, which called for
the establishment of a Munster Branch, proved to be more controversial and a
long discussion ensued, with many alternative proposals and counterproposals
being put forward. Eventually the matter was decided by a show of hands,
with the recommendation being carried by 18 votes to 8. Another
recommendation read: "VICS should continue to pressurise FAS to improve
access to its courses For visually impaired students, but it has to be
recognised that we are a small body with limited clout." The final part of
this text was objected to and it was pointed out that VICS was the only
European group to have successfully challenged Microsoft. It was agreed to
remove this phrase. All of the other recommendations were passed without
alteration and the text is appended to the minutes.

notices of motion

The first motion was to raise the annual subscription to EUR10 for ordinary
members and EUR5 for students, the unemployed and for retired persons.
This was agreed.

The second motion was that all VICS objectives and aims be carried out and
implemented by drawing up sub-committees comprising a combination of
ordinary and Committee members. This too was agreed.

election of new Committee

The following were elected to the new committee: Michael Lavin, Philip
Doyle, Paula and Gus Dorrington, Bert Brown, Noel Redmond and Michael
Meaney. Eamonn O'Connor and Paul Traynor were appointed to the Committee as
Infovics Editor and Webmaster, respectively.

open forum

J. Bollard reported that while on a recent visit to Los Angeles, he had seen
talking ATM machines and wondered if these couldn't be introduced in Irish
banks.

R. McGuirk said that the Irish telecommunications industry was now
deregulated and under the control of the Office of the Director of
telecommunications Regulation. Rather than fighting individual companies,
he suggested it would be better to have the licensing regulations amended
appropriately, as in future all companies licensed would automatically be
bound by them.

Alexis Donnelly reported the National Disability Authority drawing up a set
of accessibility guidelines for IT products, including: web sites, public
access terminals, ATM machines, desktop software and telecommunications
devices. The guidelines are mainly intended for civil servants drawing up
requests for tenders.

C. O'Meadhra suggested that the new lobbying Group look through a number of
cases and chose a suitable one to fight under the Equal Status Act.

The Chairman thanked the members for their attendance and their
contributions to the discussions. The meeting closed at 3.30 PM.