Visual impairment charity VISION 2020 UK is working with ipadio to enable anyone to “attend” its annual conference even if they cannot travel to the event itself. Attendees will listen in live on VISION 2020 UK’s web site www.vision2020uk.org.uk to hear speakers including Rt Hon David Blunkett MP, Lesley-Anne Alexander (CEO, RNIB) and Richard Leaman CB OBE (CEO, Guide Dogs) discussing the UK Vision Strategy.

The sessions start at 10 am on Tuesday 15th June at www.vision2020uk.org.uk/visionuk2010. It is free of charge and does not require registration.

Many of VISION 2020 UK’s web site visitors are visually impaired, and so ipadio has developed an accessible version of its audio players, ensuring that it is works well with both text to speech software and keyboard short cuts.

VISION 2020 UK’s motivation is to make its conference more accessible and socially inclusive, by offering the conference content free of charge and by bringing the content direct to people’s desk.

This is the first time that ipadio will be used to provide a live audio stream at above phone call quality direct from an event’s sound desk.

Many listeners will not be interested in the technology behind the broadcasts. But for those who are interested, the signal will be carried by SIP (as opposed to phone call or VoIP), ultimately giving ipadio absolute control over the signal quality. This is therefore ipadio’s next step towards providing broadcast quality live audio from smart phones and laptops.

ENDS

Contacts:
John Duffy, ipadio
E: [email protected]
T: + (0)1189 122 226
M: + (0)7887 731799
TW: @ipadio (personal: @johnrduffy)

Editor’s notes
1. VISION 2020 UK is a UK charity which facilitates greater collaboration and co-operation between organisations within the UK, which focus on vision impairment and operate on a national, regional or international basis.
2. Ipadio is a simple technology that takes any phone call and streams it live to any web site, and the company developing applications for that technology.
3. RNIB’s parallel conference Techshare will also be using ipadio to broadcast its plenary sessions at www.vision2020uk.org.uk/techsharemobile2010. Techshare explores digital technologies used by disabled people.
4. This is the first step towards broadcast quality live audio via ipadio. The signal is carried via SIP (session initiation protocol) to ipadio’s switch, allowing ipadio control over the audio bite rate. For clarity, these sessions will be broadcast live at 16 kbps. This will be much better quality than a live phone call, but not broadcast quality until we increase the bit rate.
5. For clarity: Mike Brace CBE, Chief Executive of VISION 2020 UK, also sits on the Board of Nemisys, the development team behind ipadio. Nemisys’s many charity clients include VISION 2020 UK.