[access-uk] Perkins and Penfriend
- From: "John" <john.godber@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 20 Jul 2009 17:55:55 +0100
Hello everyone,
I'm on this list as a private individual but in my "day job" I am Head of
Products and Publications for RNIB and having seen some recent exchanges I
thought I could be helpful with some comments and information.
First the Perkins. Yes the price is high but this isn't because anybody is
taking a big margin or making a profit. Certainly the Perkins in the UK is
significantly cheaper than almost anywhere else in the developed world. Prices
in Europe and Australia were at over £600 last year and will be increasing
again. We have been hit in the UK by the weakness of the pound against the
dollar and the Perkins is costing us more.
There are some alternatives like the Tatrapoint but whenever we have imported
and sold them here they have never been at all popular. The recent increase in
the Perkins price though will cause us to look at the alternatives again. In
the meantime RNIB has a website with information about a wide range of products
including Braille writing machines which you can find at
http://www.tiresias.org/research/devices/index.htm. The information for the
most part was last updated just over a year ago and there are links and email
addresses for most suppliers so you can follow them up for updated details and
prices.
Something you won't find on there yet are our new upward writing Braille
frames. . As well as the little pocket Braille King (named after the man in
RNIB who designed it) we now have two single line A4 width frames which
incorporate a roller mechanism. One of these is an upward writer which means
you prick out the dots from left to right and form the characters the right way
round. You can roll out the paper, read what you've written and roll it back to
carry on. Of course this is no good for writing long letters but it's fine for
short notes, labels etc. There is also a conventional downward writing version
of the Roller frame for people who are used to the right to left writing of
traditional frames. I was never taught that at school and personally find the
new upward writing frames very much easier to use. The roller frames cost
£29.99 and the upward has the product code BF22 and the traditional roller is
BF23. They are both on the online shop. Easiest way to find them is to do a
search for "roller". I know they aren't writing machines as such but if
somebody wants something low cost that you can use for occasional short things
then they might fit the bill.
As to the issue of prices. Generally RNIB in the UK offers lower prices than
most other similar organisations in other countries. We no longer directly
subsidise each item we sell. This is mainly for two reasons - first when we
offered a heavily subsidised price for individuals we found that organisations
such as schools and social services would get their clients to buy at the
subsidised price and then pay them back. This made their budgets stretch
further of course but also meant that RNIB's donated income was subsidising
government which is not what any of us would want. The second reason for
removing the direct subsidy is that it made it impossible for other people to
enter the market and compete. Commercial companies still frequently complain
that we are artificially affecting the market and making it hard for people to
compete. Well we are not in the business of making life easy for commercial
companies but we do want competition because it sharpens manufacturers and
suppliers, stimulates innovation and generally keeps us all on our toes.
If RNIB subsidised everything then the competition would disappear and we'd all
have to buy only products offered by RNIB. However commercial companies will
not go into any areas or product ranges where they can't make a return on their
investments. So if you go to somewhere like Sight Village you will see dozens
of video magnifiers but hardly any choice of Braille writers and tactile
watches.
We do have a mission to bring prices down generally and you may be aware of
things like our Seika Braille display which is about half the price of any
other similar device, the new Synergy CCTV/Video magnifier which we designed
with Humanware which is about £500 cheaper than other devices with the same
functionality. We have new tactile watches specially designed for us and
selling at £17.99 which is undoubtedly a good price compared to previous
products
Then there is our much-talked of Penfriend which is much cheaper than any
previous similar labelling product. You may shortly see our RNIB Penfriend on
sale in other countries but in all cases the price will be higher.
Just for the record I can say, as the man on the video, that we did not
artificially enhance the sound of the product nor would we ever. We made the
video cheaply and quickly in my office with the objective of giving people a
better idea of what the product does for people who wouldn't easily get to
Sight Village or a resource centre.
We were very keen to get the product into the UK for sight village because it's
a good way of getting the word out quickly and widely about new products. One
of the things that saddens me most is coming across people who simply had no
idea that some products exist and are needlessly struggling and getting
frustrated with simple everyday tasks. We had expected the products to arrive
two weeks before Sight Village but they are made out in China to keep costs
down and you can't always be absolutely sure on delivery from such a distance.
They were hand delivered to our stand on the Wednesday by the inventor and also
some are in our warehouse in Peterborough. They should all be with customers
by the weekend. 4,000 in total are due by mid August and once production is
better matched to demand things should be much smoother. Just for information
RNIB runs on average at 5 per cent out of stock with products which is actually
a very good position. So on 95 per cent of occasions products are in stock -
though of course it never feels like that when you personally order something
which isn't available.
Well I'll leave it there for now. I have been reluctant to comment on
discussions on this list because I worry that people will think that their
conversations are being watched by the bureaucrat from RNIB but if list members
would welcome our engaging more often with some factual commentaries on issues
that have been raised then I would gladly do so.
John
Other related posts:
