Theme:
- Volunteers helping people with sight loss
Background
The RNIB Transcription Centre Northwest was set up in 1977 by a local person who saw a need for a transcription service for people with sight loss. After 2 years of demonstrating that the service could sustain itself with the help of volunteers, RNIB began funding the service and continues to do so. The transcription centre is an ‘on-demand’ service, being entirely dependent on material which clients send in to be transferred from print to analogue or digital audio, large print and Braille.
Individuals who send in materials to be transcribed are not charged, but the Centre receives additional revenue from intermediaries, for examples statutory organisations, companies, councils and educational organisations.
Volunteers
The office has 8 paid staff and 120 volunteers who volunteer a minimum of one and a half hours per week, although 30% of volunteers give more time than this. A number of volunteers are of retirement age and women outnumber men. Many are recruited through word of mouth, perhaps from friends and neighbours who also volunteer for RNIB, and volunteer centres in Chester, Crewe and Nantwich also help to recruit volunteers for the Centre. Some volunteers come via the ‘Do-it.org.uk’ volunteer database. The Centre has been successful in attracting volunteers by running courses as part of company retirement programmes, and has also engaged employee volunteers from local companies who allow their staff time to volunteer for the RNIB.
Motivation
There are a number of reasons which people cite for volunteering for the transcription service. Some volunteers have family members or friends with sight loss and want to help directly or indirectly and others simply enjoy the relative quiet they get from sitting in a recording studio on their own, away from noisy families! For others it is the feeling of intimacy in a small, friendly office in a large village. Transcription is also a popular choice as it is a physical task with immediate results. Volunteers can actually see the results of their work.
Training
When a volunteer walks through the door they have an informal chat with the Manager. They are shown the office and studios and are introduced to what will be expected of them. This gives volunteers the opportunity to see whether or not they will like the work – some people are not suited to the solitary nature of the job, whereas for others this is a motivating factor. If reading, they are given a ‘test read’ to see whether their voice is suitable for transcribing, and all are shown the equipment they will have to use. Training is comprehensive and is carried out over 8 sessions which determines volunteers’ ability and enables them to ask questions and feed back. As well as training for readers, for volunteer typists there are 5 sessions and for other volunteers there are 1 to 2 sessions of ‘Braille bursting’ which involves tearing apart the Braille sheets which have been produced from the materials sent in by individuals or organisations.
Training also covers using intonation, dealing with footnotes and references, quotes, and describing diagrams; for most material, there are accepted conventions to be followed for transcription.
Subject matter
It is important for the volunteer manager to ascertain volunteers’ interests when they arrive at the Centre so they can match volunteer readers with texts they will understand and/or have a specialist interest in, for example, French, Maths or a cookery book. Likewise, a non-knitter would perhaps have trouble transcribing a knitting pattern. The Centre in the North West can transcribe virtually everything, though may take longer to transcribe some languages which only a couple of volunteers may be able to understand.
Intermediaries, e.g. housing associations may ask the Centre to transcribe agendas, minutes or even water bills, although the larger head office deals with requests from banks or mobile phone companies as it has more resources to deal with these.
Volunteers have coped over the years with many changes and developments in technology, despite often only being in the office or studio once a week. The manager always passes on thanks to the volunteers from people whose material they have transcribed, which volunteers (and staff) find extremely motivating. She says of the volunteers “they are a wonderful, dedicated bunch of people!”
Contact Details
The Manager
RNIB Transcription Centre Northwest
67 High Street
Tarporley
Cheshire CW 6 0DP
01829 73 24 08
tarporley@rnib.org.uk
