Hello to our readers and a very warm welcome to our Autumn Newsletter.
It’s been a really busy few months across the network with so much going on. Thank you to the Karten Centres who have been really well engaged, it is fabulous to be visiting organisations again to see the excellent work you are doing first hand and to have the opportunity to discuss your projects and ideas for the future.
On 3rd November at 10.00 we will be holding a remote Smart Home Forum for anyone interested in smart home technologies. Technologists from the Nuvoic project will present aspects of their work, before we provide an opportunity for attendees to “show and tell”. Invites will go to colleagues with an interest in this field, but I will also send the joining link via the Karten Jiscmail group. Or if you prefer, please contact me by email dawn@karten-network.org.uk to express an interest in attending.
We are in the very early stages of planning a Karten Centre beneficiary event for Spring 2023. The idea is to bring Karten Centre service users and staff together to share some of the excellence across organisations. The event will be held in London and hosted by a Karten Centre, if it’s successful and there is a demand we will be very happy to repeat in other locations. In addition to being a good opportunity to bring people together, there could be some work-related learning opportunities for service users who could take on organisational roles for the events. I would really value your thoughts on this idea, please contact me to discuss further.
In this newsletter we welcome a new Karten Board Director, David Webster, from St Helen’s Buzz Hub. Buzz Hub is one of our newest centres and I am delighted to include them in a new newsletter feature this time In The Spotlight. If you would like to feature as the In The Spotlight organisation in our next Newsletter, please drop me an email dawn@karten-network.org.uk.
Many of our Karten Centres now have TechAbility Champions appointed in the organisation and this initiative is impacting positively on Assistive Technology experience and practice, it’s a great source of additional support and networking. You don’t need to have a high level of technology know-how, TechAbility can help you to develop this. New members are welcomed with a passion to make a difference in learners’/service users’ lives. The aim is to empower you as professionals to provide better support and make use of this exciting opportunity. To find out more, contact techability@natspec.org.uk and they will arrange a conversation to see how they can best support you. There is more information later in the newsletter from TechAbility. Remember to register for the TechAbility Conference if you have not already done so, it’s a little over a month away now and we can guarantee it’s the best value CPD for Assistive Technology in the UK.
As the Nuvoic project enters the final months there are some really exciting developments, particularly the progress towards real time speech recognition and live transcription achieved by Voiceitt integration with platforms such as Zoom. The Nuvoic article in this newsletter includes further information, a live transcription demo clip and details of how you can get involved. We still need more participants to donate recordings to help develop this technology more quickly and test the results. We want to include as many non-standard voices as possible so please get in touch if you or people you support would like to get involved. We can offer equipment on loan, technical support, gift cards of up to £100 for participants and funding for organisations and individuals supporting someone to take part. If you or your organisation would like to be involved in this exciting development work, please see our web pages or contact our project co-ordinator: liz@karten-network.org.uk for more information.
As I write there are just 72 days until Christmas, the year will be over before we know it! You can expect something fun from us before we break for the holidays, but our next typical newsletter will be in January 2023. I warmly invite contributions for that newsletter, including for the In The Spotlight feature.
Take care, keep up the good work and I look forward to catching up with you very soon!
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- Featured in the Karten Autumn 2022 Newsletter
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