Item of the Month, June 2012: Charles Barbier, Petite typographie privée d'ambulance (Paris: Chez l'auteur, c. 1815)

At first glance, this image might look familiar. It’s a coded text that uses raised dots to be read by the fingertips. But one group of people who won’t find the code easy to understand are readers of Braille. That’s because this text isn’t written in Braille, but in a precursor to Braille devised by Charles Barbier, known as night-writing.

Nicholas Marie Charles Barbier de la Serre (1767-1841) was a captain in the Napoleonic army, who became obsessed with ways to improve communication with his troops and in particular with relaying orders in the dark without alerting the enemy. Barbier’s solution was a kind of phonetic code - he split the French language into 36 sounds which he laid out in a grid of numbered rows and columns. Though various methods, Barbier suggested, these grid positions could be communicated, and the sounds understood. One of these methods used the hands, rather like sign language – a number of fingers on the light hand were touched to a number on the left hand, representing the number of rows and columns on the grid. In another variation the code was cut into a piece of paper with a pocket knife; in yet another dots were impressed into the paper using a blunted stylus – the first line of dots represented rows, the second columns.

Barbier was confident that his invention was a good one – he just didn’t know what it could be used for. Rough-handed soldiers found it hard to read the impressions with their fingertips and the system was dismissed by the army as impractical and difficult to learn. Undeterred, Barbier considered various other uses. In a series of self-published pamphlets, of which Petite typographie privée d'ambulance is one, he proposed uses ranging from teaching the illiterate to read and write, to surreptitious note-taking, to creating multiple copies of the same article.

Finally Barbier realised that a system that had been designed to be used in the dark could be equally useful to the blind. In 1821 he presented his method to the blind children at the Institution Nationale des Jeunes Aveugle for testing. It was by no means the first type of embossed text the pupils had encountered - the founder of the school, Valentin Haüy, had produced tactile books for the blind since 1786. However, Haüy’s alphabetic script was not at all suited to reading by touch – rounded letters are easily distinguished from another by sight, but with the fingers they are slow to read, even with two hands. Barbier’s invention was received enthusiastically by the testers, but there were problems – the system was phonetic, so no good for boys who needed to master spelling and grammar to prepare them for work. Worse, there was no punctuation, meaning that the sounds ran into one another and became jumbled.

In the end it was a pupil at the school who made the adaptions necessary to put the code to use. Louis Braille heard the presentation when he was just 12 years old. His improvements - adapting the code from a phonetic to an alphabetic one and using 6 dots rather than 12 - meant that it could be read quickly with the fingers of just one hand. It was these changes that made the system practical and fast enough to give blind pupils a taste of the independence they craved. In 1837 Braille published his modified code, and in 1854, it was officially adopted in all French schools.

By all accounts a stubborn and condescending man, Barbier continued to proclaim his écriture nocturne to be the superior system, even as it was eclipsed by the success of Braille’s. Nevertheless, Braille acknowledged Barbier’s contribution in the second edition of his work, praising the ‘ingenious’ invention that had allowed him to construct his system of communication for the blind.

Author: Jo Maddocks

Further reading:

Charles Barbier, Petite Typographie Privée d'Ambulance (Paris: Chez l'auteur, c. 1815)
Lennard Bickel, Triumph Over Darkness: the Life of Louis Braille (London : Unwin Hyman, 1988)
Elizabeth M. Harris, In Touch: Printing and Writing for the Blind in the Nineteenth Century (Washington : Smithsonian, 1981)

Thalidomide: A Human Tragedy?

This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of the withdrawal of the drug thalidomide from the market. A number of events are planned to coincide with this date including, tonight, an evening event in Wellcome Collection under the above title, in which a panel of guests will discuss whether or not the thalidomide story could or should be described as a human tragedy.

Certainly, looking at the archive material collected over the last year following the Thalidomide Scoping Project funded by a Wellcome Trust People Award that Prof Anne Borsay from Swansea University and I worked on, you feel pulled in many directions. A number of books deal with the roots of the drug (Thalidomide and the Power of the Drug Companies, Henning Sjöström and Robert Nilsson, Hammondsworth: Penguin, 1972) and the lengthy court case to gain compensation from Distillers (Suffer the Children: the Story of Thalidomide, Sunday Times Insight Team, London: Andre Deutsch, 1979) but outside the somewhat easier to quantify feelings of outrage and justification, how is it possible to quantify the effects of thalidomide on the actual lives of this diverse group of people? And, moreover, how do they see themselves?

One of the most striking things when working with thalidomide-affected people is that they really only by necessity have two things in common – their mothers took a prescribed drug at a particular moment of their pregnancy and they were all born within the same four-year period, 1958-1962. Other than that, it is possible they may never have come into contact with one another, spread across the continents as they are. Social background, family acceptance, institutionalisation, education, degree of disability and adult life are, to different extents, down to chance and there are no necessary similarities.

On Saturday 26th May, the Thalidomide Society is hosting its 50 Years On conference at the Park Plaza Hotel. Prof Borsay and I will be giving a presentation at the conference in which we will outline the importance of thalidomide sources for history, aiming to situate this unique story from the history of medicine into a wider context.

As part of our presentation we will screen clips from two films acquired by the Library's Moving Image and Sound Collection from the Thalidomide Society: One of Them is Brett, 1965 and Only the Beginning, 1969.

One of Them is Brett was written and directed by Roger Graef and produced by Derrick Knight & Partners Ltd. It was Graef’s first film, produced for the Thalidomide Society for the Aid of Thalidomide Children with the aim of educating people about the everyday life and struggles of a boy affected by thalidomide with voiceovers provided by Brett’s mother and Stanley Baxter. The film won the Silver Dragon at Krakow and was shown on the BBC, CBC and ABC Scope in the US as well as going on to become part of medical school curricula.

The film features Brett Nielsen [1], a boy born with no arms after his mother took thalidomide during her pregnancy. In one scene, the Nielsen family visit the Nuffield Orthopaedic Hospital where Brett is fitted with his first set of gas-powered prosthetic arms of the Heidelberg variety.

Stanley Baxter gives an enthusiastic narration but after a promising start, Brett rapidly goes on to reject the arms in favour of using his feet with increasingly stunning dexterity.

Despite his reluctance to wear prosthetic arms, the narration at the end of the film suggests that for Brett and children like him, the future will be inexplicably bound up with technological developments.

In contrast, Only the Beginning is a film subtitled “a profile about the children today” and shows scenes in which children learn to fit in with ordinary school life without the need of prosthetic enhancements.

Both films, made only a few years apart, show a changing attitude towards how to wrong a right. Is it possible to correct a medical ‘tragedy’ by replacing something ‘missing’ with something artificial? Or  is the only way to replace the wrong done to these children and their families through support and acceptance, assisting them to seek ways of living in and using the body they were born with?

Author: Ruth Blue

[1] Brett Nielsen is currently a motivational speaker and pianist specialising in recording music for relaxation.

Thalidomide 50 Years On

The archive of the Thalidomide Society (SA/TSY) and the papers of Professor Richard Smithells (PP/SML) have been catalogued and are now available to researchers at the Wellcome Library. Thalidomide was developed by the pharmaceutical company Grünenthal in Germany in 1957, and was used as a painkiller and tranquillizer. It was also effective in treating morning sickness during pregnancy, and many scientists believed that this drug would not harm the developing baby. However this was found not to be the case, and over 10,000 children in 46 countries were born with deformities such as phocomelia. The drug was licenced in Britain in 1958, marketed as Distaval, and was withdrawn in late 1961. Between 1959 and 1962 approximately 2,000 babies were born with deformities due to the drug, and only 466 survived. 2012 is a landmark year concerning thalidomide: it is just over 50 years since withdrawal of the drug Distaval and is the 50th anniversary of the formation of the Thalidomide Society.

The Thalidomide Society (originally called the Society for the Aid of Thalidomide Children) was formed by a meeting of four parents in August 1962, at the Dolphin Hotel in Southampton. Their aim was to set up a national society devoted to the aid of their own and other children affected by the drug thalidomide. The inaugural meeting took place on 20th October 1962, with forty-four parents attending. A draft constitution was created (SA/TSY/A/1) which states that the Society would not only include children affected by thalidomide but those with similar disabilities. Branches of the Thalidomide Society were set up, due to the wide geographic range of the parents. They would meet regularly and operated with local organisations that could help the families.

The Society worked closely with the Lady Hoare Thalidomide Appeal until 1974, to raise money to help the families affected, and increase awareness of their cause, this was helped by several national newspapers (see extensive press coverage represented in SA/TSY/G). There were a variety of fundraising schemes, general donations and offers of help (SA/TSY/C/1) and car competitions (SA/TSY/C/3). The money raised from these was used to support thalidomide families with social workers, research into new technologies (such as prosthetic arms and wheelchairs), a holiday home, and went towards the Oxford Centre for Enablement and the Chailey Heritage Craft School and Hospital. The Society is now a user led organisation; the majority of the council is made up of thalidomide affected people. The archive of the Thalidomide Society contains documents on its creation, (SA/TSY/A/1), fundraising schemes (SA/TSY/C), publications (SA/TSY/D), and of their recent events such as the annual AGM and conferences (SA/TSY/A/3).

Distillers (the company that distributed thalidomide: it is now owned by Diageo Ltd) and the parents of the children affected by thalidomide finally reached a settlement in 1973, after years of negotiations. From this the Thalidomide Children’s Trust (now the Thalidomide Trust) was set up to distribute the payments fairly amongst those affected. Professor Richard Smithells, a renowned consultant paediatrician, worked closely in these negotiations and provided medical testimony. Smithells became involved with thalidomide as a clinician on the Liverpool Registry of Congenital Abnormalities that was formed in 1960, where he began studying the links between prescription drug use during pregnancy and birth defects. Along with several other physicians he discovered the teratogenicity of thalidomide in 1961, and subsequently became a leading expert on thalidomide diagnostics. Much of his work concerning thalidomide and congenital malformations is reflected in the new catalogue PP/SML. These papers include a copy of a book for children he created for the NSPCC, Alphabet Zoop (PP/SML/A/3), correspondence and reports working with the Thalidomide Trust (PP/SML/C) and various textual resources he collected over the years regarding the drug (PP/SML/E). He became the Chair of Paediatrics and Child Health at the University of Leeds in 1968, and he served on the Thalidomide Trust advisory council from 1974, then as a trustee from December 1976.

The collections of the Thalidomide Society and Professor Smithells are part of the Wellcome Library’s Archives and Manuscripts collection. The catalogue can be searched on our online catalogue using the references SA/TSY and PP/SML respectively. Please note that due to the subject and nature of the material a significant proportion of the documents in these two collections have been closed for various fixed periods, for data sensitivity reasons.

Author: Morwenna Roche

The ‘Spare-part biologist’: Sir Peter Medawar

"He was a big man. That was the first thing that struck you as he strode into the room. A big man - tall and vibrant with life. His sheer presence communicated a sense of power: not political power, not domination, but physical power, above all intellectual power... It was difficult not to be awe-stricken in the company of Peter Medawar" (1)

Such descriptions of Sir Peter Medawar, the Nobel-Prize winning zoologist whose archive has just been digitised, make browsing through his personal papers somehow more tangible. Not all biologists get to appear in Vogue as Medawar did in 1971 (2).

It is a tragedy that Medawar was plagued by persistent strokes later on in life. First struck down dramatically mid-speech in Exeter cathedral in 1969, he persevered through ever disabling health issues to continue to write seven books until his death in 1987. (3)

Some of the most poignant material from Medawar’s papers is those letters that relate to his strokes: correspondence from 1970 includes a series of self-portrait drawings illustrating his recovery from his seizure: one image is marked 'PBM body image 9 July 1970, Pablo Medawar pixit' with spiky fingers and elongated ears.



Other drawings dated ‘May 16’ shows him with enlarged hands and feet and another dated ‘May 26’ with a third leg (possibly a crutch) and just one overgrown ear like protrusion from his head.





Such drawings were part of his traumatic recovery process as explained in his autobiographical work Memoir of a thinking radish (p.157, Oxford University Press, 1986) and revealed, to Medawar at least, an ‘eye defect’ brought on by the stroke. His confidence in his recovery never abated it seems – despite his evident disability, it is a relief to read a note from '9 May' stating repeatedly 'I am feeling better' (4)

The archive will be available to view from 2012. Further details of the digitisation programme can be obtained from the Wellcome Library digitisation project pages.

References:
1. Dipak Nandy, p.1 of an article for p.1 The Runnymede Trust, 1988, file ref: PP/PBM/F.58

2. The article features a shot of him musing at a desk with a cat out of focus in the front, File ref: PP/PBM/D55

3. A full listing of all books authored by Medawar held in the Wellcome Library.

4. File ref: PP/PBM/A.43

Images:

- Photo of Medawar was apparently intended for use in article by Medawar in "Lying Truths" according to pencil inscription on verso ("Lying truths : a critical scrutiny of current beliefs and conventions, Ronald Duncan and Miranda Weston-Smith, Pergamon Press, 1979.

- Self-portrait drawings are dated 1970 from file ref: PP/PBM/A.43

Blind Granny and her kind

"Blind Granny" with her tankard. Wellcome Library no. 16500i

A new exhibition Reframing disability has opened at the Royal College of Physicians in their spectacular building on the south-east corner of Regent's Park. It includes items selected from a collection of prints ranging from the 17th century to the late 19th century showing people with congenital physical abnormalities or disabilities. The Wellcome Library has similar items, and for many of them the new research in the exhibition catalogue (by Carole Reeves, Julie Anderson and Bridget Telfer) has enabled the Wellcome Library catalogue entries to be upgraded with new information.

One example is "Blind Granny", who is shown above. Her real name is unknown, but her claim to fame was that she could wipe her blind eye with her tongue, a trick she would perform in exchange for a tankard of beer. She was portrayed from the life by the mezzotint artist John Faber (c.1660-1721), from whose portrait many copies flowed as people took away mementoes of her unusual feat of contortion. Other prints show giants and dwarfs, conjoined twins, and people with paralysed, deformed or missing limbs, including one of an armless Swedish woman, Magdalena Rudolfs Thuinbuj (b. ca. 1612), whose star turn involved firing a pistol with her toes. The prints have been in the College for many years, but not catalogued until now, and their origin is lost in time: their original collector is unknown. In addition to the prints, the college has a painting of the dwarf and painter Richard Gibson (1615-1690), apparently after a lost painting by Lely, which is also on show.

But the exhibition of the historic pictures in Reframing disability is part of a larger project. With SHAPE (an organization that works to improve access for disabled people to arts and cultural provision) the Royal College of Physicians gathered a focus group of people themselves with different kinds and degrees of disablement, from different places and professions; invited them to discuss the historic prints; and created new colour portrait photographs of the participants, with their own commentaries, for comparison and contrast with the historic items. This invited a stimulating clash of contexts: it comes as something of a shock to turn from the black and white prints produced by (in many cases) Georgian publishers for their market, to the colour photographs of our contemporaries, accompanied by their own voices. One striking similarity with the historic disabled is that many members of the focus group are also engaged in arts and entertainment (acting, writing, photography, music).

As the accompanying book explains, specialists in the field identify two models for discussing disability: the "medical model", which sees the disabled as patients to be cured of a physical problem, and the "social model", in which society has a problem in making the good things in life available for people with certain physical conditions. As so often ("art" and "science" being another example), the study of history shows up this dichotomy as to some degree an artificial schism created by language. The historic "social model" against which many of the people in the historic prints are portrayed was really one in which they could use their abnormality to make a living, in some cases (Richard Gibson for example) a very good living: far from being excluded from society, they used their talents to join in with society's exchange of goods and services, though even the successful shared the pitfalls of show-business. The "medical model" tends to assume that the scope and character of medicine is unchanging through the centuries, and that medicine is uniform at any given time, neither of which would be admissible for historians. Many of these abnormal people lived in times when the patient could be in charge.

The medical term for Blind Granny's abnormality is apparently macroglossia, which simply means in ancient Greek the state of having a long tongue. Perhaps that really is the "medical model" – use of a language in which many of the College's Fellows in former days would have been at home – though it could be argued that it simply places medicine among the professions, many of which (the law, the military, statecraft, architecture, etc.) have their own jargon and claim ancient forebears.

But the fact that the Royal College of Physicians is hosting the exhibition in its Modern Movement building (right), and has adapted that Grade 1 listed building to allow disabled access, shows that even "medical models" are not exempt from change over time.

Reframing disability: portraits from the Royal College of Physicians is at the Royal College of Physicians, 11 St Andrew's Place, London NW1 4LE, until 8 July 2011, and will then go on tour: details here. Supported by SHAPE and by the Wellcome Trust. Catalogue and essays: ISBN 978-1-86016-415-6. On-line gallery: here.

Item of the Month, June 2010: William Moon and Moon Type

Today is the 130th anniversary of the birth of Helen Keller, the American author and activist. We could write an 'Item of the Month' post on the holdings in the Wellcome Library on this fascinating woman, but have decided to focus on a lesser-known figure who aimed to transform the lives of people with visual impairments.

William Moon (1818-1894) may not be a household name now, but during his lifetime he was recognised as the creator of the first widely-used practical reading alphabet for the blind.

Moon grew up in Kent, but by the time he was 22 he had become totally blind (the after-effects of contracting scarlet fever as a child) and moved to Brighton, to live with his sister and widowed mother.

There, he set up his own day school for blind children and taught his pupils how to read using existing embossed reading codes. However, due to the boys finding it difficult to use these systems, in the 1840s Moon devised his own, which became known as Moon Type.

Moon Type uses embossed lines and curves – similar to print – to create nine basic shapes. Rotating or reflecting these shapes in different positions creates the 26 letters of the Roman alphabet and the basis for providing a tactile version of any text.


(Guide to Moon Type from William Moon's An Elementary Reading Book, 1860)


(First page of embossed text from William Moon's An Elementary Reading Book, 1860. How well can you read it?)

Moon Type was the first widely-used practical reading alphabet for the blind in this country. Moon published his new system in 1845 16 years after Louis Braille had invented his system. However, Braille had yet to cross over the channel, and Moon Type was well established before Braille was taken up in Britain.

Understandably, demand for materials in Moon Type was high and William Moon began on an energetic campaign of printing pamphlets and travelling the country setting up Moon Type printing presses. A man of strong faith, by 1860 Moon was printing chapters of the Bible but his dream of producing all the books of the Old and New Testaments in Moon Type never came to fruition in his lifetime. The large type – and therefore, need for large, one-sided pages – made for bulky and heavy volumes.



(Book of John, in Type for the Blind).

However, Moon expanded his system into other languages: using his original nine basic shapes, by the time of his death in 1894, he had embossed the Lord’s Prayer or another portion of scripture into 476 languages or dialects. He moved into less liturgical works, printing some scientific treatises and selections from authors such as Shakespeare, Scott and Burns and devised Pictures for the Blind, which taught blind people by touch the form and shape of common objects.

Although William Moon’s system has been subsequently replaced in popularity – and recognition – by Louis Braille’s system, Moon Type is still used by people who have difficulty reading Braille, and has been found to be suitable for people who have lost their sight after learning to read.

Moon’s achievements were recognised during his lifetime, with elections to the fellowships of both the Royal Geographical Society (1852) and the Royal Society of Arts (1857) and the award of an honorary degree by the University of Philadelphia in 1871.

More details on Moon Type is available from the website of the Royal National Institue for Blind People (RNIB). And also thanks to this blog post, which inspired us to choose Moon's works held in the Wellcome Library for this Item of the Month post.

Item of the Month, March: Spring comes in 1807

Today, officially, marks the first day of spring in the Northern Hemisphere: the point from which days are longer than nights, and the long winter is finally behind us. Of course, this is an artificial date: spring is not something that is switched on on a particular day, but a gradual process, a slow awakening that takes place at different times at different latitudes. There is strong variation even within the United Kingdom: the same flowers may be in full bloom in Cornwall, whilst Scotland will not see them for weeks yet. For each part of the country, however, there will be a rough average date at which, year on year, the different markers of spring appear: the first snowdrops, the first catkins, and – famously the subject of competitive letters to the Times – the first cuckoo.

Would you know, however, when those rough dates are for the place you live? Could you tell if the daffodils came out a week later than usual? And, faced with the recent news reports that spring is coming earlier each year, would you be able to judge their accuracy against your own experience?

And could you do it without using your eyes?

March’s item of the month gives us a fascinating look at a man who could have said Yes to all those questions: the scientist, mathematician and all-round “natural philosopher” John Gough (1757-1825). Gough was born in Kendal, in the Lake District, and lived in the area all his life. Like many contemporary significant figures in science, he was a Quaker. He was the son of a prosperous dyer in the town, and thus came from a social stratum that would not normally expect at that time to go to university. His father Nathan Gough, unusually, was prepared to pay for him to remain in full-time education longer than was customary at this time, and Gough was still studying in his early twenties. To this extent, we could see him as having had an advantage over his peers. However, although his father could contribute to Gough overcoming social barriers, there was one difficulty Gough faced that could not be remedied: he had been blind since contracting smallpox at the age of three.

Gough’s disability did not prevent him pursuing his scientific interests. As a teenager, for instance, he set up a botanical club at school, in which he would subject a plant to minute analysis with his fingers whilst another boy would read out its description; and he carried out experiments in his father’s dye-house. As a young man he studied mathematics and collaborated with a fellow Lakeland Quaker, John Dalton (father of the modern atomic theory): Dalton would help Gough with his scientific works and in exchange Gough would tutor Dalton in Latin and Greek. Gough corresponded with the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Societey, and published papers on a wide range of topics, his core interest being in the physics and perception of sound – research in which he drew, of course, upon his own experience in using sound to compensate for his lost sight.


In the spring of 1807, Gough had just turned fifty years old. Our item of the month finds him in correspondence with another independent Quaker scientist, the chemist and meteorologist Luke Howard (1772-1864). Howard worked as a manufacturing chemist but his real interest was in meteorology: he subjected the weather and climate to long-term close examination and lives on today as the man who devised the classification scheme for clouds – stratus, cumulus and cirrus, and their various sub-categories. This classification – which revolutionised the way we look at the sky, delighted Goethe and has been cited as an influence on Constable and Turner – was first proposed in 1803. Four years later, when he and Gough corresponded, Howard was engaged in a long-term project to record the climate of London (which bore fruit in his book The Climate of London, originally published in two volumes in 1818-1820 and later reissued and enlarged in 1833).

For Howard, Gough provides a detailed breakdown, day by day, of the spring of 1807: the weather and the changes in the natural world. The large manuscript sheets on which this is recorded are now held at the Wellcome Library as part of the papers of the Hodgkin and Howard families under the reference PP/HO/K/A14.

Gough gives us an account of natural phenomena minutely observed. There is weather, of course, both general description and also precise measurements of wind direction and speed, atmospheric pressure, maximum and minimum temperatures, and precipitation. But there is also the naturalist’s perspective, recording birdsong and the way that plants are opening out in their appointed sequence, a close engagement with a landscape that can no longer be seen but can be heard and touched. Some sample entries give the flavour of what seems to have been, like this year, a cold March, but one in which there is a perceptible gathering of pace as the days pass:

March 2: Sambucus nigra, Elder, leafing
March 4: Slight snow showers A.M.: the three preceding days fine
March 17: Snow from 5 PM to 11 PM. Ewes lamb
March 22. White wagtail sings. Primrose fl[owe]rs.
March 24. Daffodil fl[owe]rs.
March 25. Goos[e]berry leafing.
March 26. Min[imum] of temperature at Kendal 23° [Fahrenheit], occasioned by hoarfrost. Oats sown.
March 30. Sleet. Snipe hums.

April continued intermittently cold, with two inches of snow as late as the 17th, and the fieldfare (a member of the thrush family that typically visits England from Scandinavia in winter) still present on the 20th. By the end of the month, however, he is noting the arrival of swallows (26th), thunder to the south and blackthorn blossom (30th) and – of course – the first cuckoo, on the 27th. All the markers of spring are in place.

On March 21st, incidentally, Gough records: “Wet. Lapwing arrives.” This weekend we invite our readers in northern Europe to walk in the fields – with luck, dry ones – and see if any lapwings have arrived to breed. (Identification details can be found here). For an extra taste of Gough’s work, sighted readers are invited to close their eyes, take a shoot or leaf between their fingers and feel it carefully, then try to work out how many different types of birdsong can be heard; and imagine themselves in the Lake District in 1807, as a long cold spell comes to an end and nature wakes itself.

The top image shows a chromolithograph of a goldfinch amidst cherry blossoms, from the Library's Iconographic Collections. The other images are from Gough's meteorological journal, PP/HO/K/A14.

Wellcome Library to host Learning on Screen 2009

The Wellcome Library will be hosting the Learning on Screen conference 2009 at The Wellcome Collection, 7-8 April 2009.

The BUFVC are organising this conference, and have put forward a call for papers, with a submission deadline of 15 January 2009. This annual conference was established by the Society for Screen-Based Learning and focuses on the delivery of learning and research with moving image and sound - be it broadcasting, web delivery or cinema.

During the conference there will be opportunities to visit the Wellcome Collection's spectacular permanent and temporary exhibitions.

Two key themes of the conference will be:

• Disability and Access to Moving Image and Sound
• Online Moving Image and Sound Services for Learning