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. Although we are a British charity, we welcome listeners wherever they may be.

We champion audio, however produced, as the universal medium for carrying information to vision-impaired people, whatever level of sight they may have. And, as audio producers and journalists, we believe in sharing practical information that can help those living with loss to make choices that can benefit daily living. We are strictly impartial, objective, apolitical and non-commercial and we never promote any one service or product as being better than any other.

We simply aim to inform and explain.

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, but is 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 provides impartial information - we neither promote nor endorse any products or services we mention - 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 our equipment.

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 for supporting - well, in practice, for enabling - what we do.

In 2017, 2018 and 2020 we received three grants from the

Parry Family Charitable Foundation for the purchase of new equipment.

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.