About Infosound, the charity

What we do and why we do it

Infosound's mission has always been "to inform and to explain" and our core aim is to share information, knowledge, experience and opinion for the benefit of vision-impaired (blind and partially-sighted) people across Great Britain.

We champion audio, however produced, as a near-universal medium for carrying information to vision-impaired people, whatever level of sight they may have. We believe in sharing information that is readily available to those with sight to help to break down barriers and reduce a sense of isolation that many with poor or failing sight may experience.

We would like to level the playing field in our mainly sighted world.

Infosound, the charity

Infosound is an independent British charity, registered in England, Scotland and Wales.

We are a member of the National Council for Voluntary Organisations, the Talking News Federation and the local sight loss charity umbrella organisation Visionary.

We operate under the terms of our charitable Constitution and, aware of our obligation to listening members of the public, our staff and our volunteers, we work to a number of policy guidelines, approved by our charity's trustees:

Infosound Privacy Policy
Infosound Safeguarding Policy
Infosound Health and Safety Policy
Infosound Editorial Policy

These may all be found in our Policy Statements document.

We are registered with HMRC as a charity and with the Information Commissioner’s Office under the terms of the General Data Protection Regulation, GDPR.

Funding

Infosound has modest running costs, and is entirely reliant on raising funds from voluntary donation and grants. We remain extremely grateful to all those who enable our work to continue so that we can provide our services to others completely free of charge.

There is more about supporting our work here.

Our most recent (and past) Annual Report and Accounts are registered with both the Charity Commission (of England and Wales) and the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator. Our financial year runs from January to December and:

our 2023 Annual Report and Accounts for England and Wales may be viewed here.
our 2023 Annual Report and Accounts for Scotland may be viewed here.

Supporting Our Work

Because Infosound is a charity and we provide information, in audio, in an impartial way, we are not able to attract funding to support our work through advertising or other similar ways.

Neither do we appeal for donations from vision-impaired members of the public, believing as we do that the kind of information we provide and share is their right to have and should not be paid for by the listener.

So we can only appeal to grant-giving charities and other like-minded organisations. We tell them a little about our work, explain its benefits and request funds, either to contribute towards our day-to-day running costs or to buy or maintain the equipment needed to sustain what we do.

Since the charity was founded in 2008, we have received donations from within the Vision-Impairment Sector and from various trust funds. The majority of donors ask to remain anonymous, but we hope they know that we are extremely grateful to them all for enabling what we do.

Should you wish to know how you could support our work throughout Great Britain, please don't hesitate to get in touch by emailing info@infosound.org.uk. Thank you.

go to the Infosound introduction