Category: blog

18 September 2017

The Accessible Information Standard: update

Accessible Information Standard How A2i can help you comply with the Accessible Information Standard The UK government’s Accessible Information Standard came into force from the 1st August 2016. You may already know that the Standard requires publicly funded health and social care organisations to ensure patients, service-users, their parents, and carers can get information in …

20 July 2017

A2i turns 18!

A2i Celebrating 18 Year’s Journey This year we’re celebrating our 18th birthday, and we’ll be marking this occasion with a big celebration in August! We thought our 18th would be an ideal chance to give something back to our community, so we’re also celebrating by offering 18 gifts to local organisations and businesses in Bristol. …

7 July 2017

Making linguistics and language learning accessible

How can we make linguistics and language learning accessible for visually impaired students? I’ve just returned from a very fruitful and inspiring workshop, ‘Accessible Linguistics for Visually Impaired Students’ (ALVIS), organised by York St John university exploring just this. Students, academics, teachers, and professionals from Brazil, Poland, and across the UK gathered in the beautiful city of …

9 June 2017

A2i launches new website

We’re delighted to launch our new, user-friendly website, packed full of resources and advice to help you reach your blind, partially-sighted and print-disabled customers and end-users. You may have already noticed it, but we’ve been hard a work re-designing our website which we hope you’ll find much easier to use. The site now offers: easier to …

2 June 2017

How to write an alternative format statement

It may seem an odd question, but just how accessible is your statement about your document’s accessibility? We often find that document accessibility statements like ‘this information is available in alternative formats on request’ are in a tiny, hard-to-read font or colour, often hidden away at the back of the document – when they should …

2 June 2017

Are you reaching all print-disabled customers?

Do you have customers with dyslexia or learning difficulties who might also benefit from accessible formats? Meaning of Print Disability Although most of the recipients of our transcriptions have sight loss, many are sighted but are described as having a ‘print-disability’. But what does ‘print-disabled’ actually mean? “A print disabled person is a person who …

26 May 2017

How do you vote if you have sight loss?

Unless you are blind, partially sighted, or know someone who is, it’s possible you’ve never wondered how blind people vote. But of course, just like sighted voters, blind and visually impaired people have a right to vote independently, and in secret. For a process so entrenched in the written medium, we find out how polling stations …

Image of old fashion General Election ballot box

21 March 2017

Making maths accessible

A2i’s phone rings: “Hello! We have a visually impaired student at Liverpool Hope University who has enrolled on the BA Mathematics course. She’ll need course documents transcribed every week into Braille and e-text, with touchable diagrams. Can you help?”  Yes, A2i can! Our team of Maths experts Many transcribers may balk at this request, but …

26 February 2017

The blind chef and his autistic assistant

A great example of inclusivity We love this fascinating BBC News video of blind professional chef David, and his kitchen assistant Peter who has autism, working together as a team to cook food for a café in Scotland. BBC News – The cafe where the food is made by a blind cook and his autistic …

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