You Need
April Anniversaries - a Short History of Inclusive Technology
April 2001
It is Brontë country. Just a few miles south of Wuthering Heights on the high Pennine moors, the A640 Buckstones Road snakes across from Huddersfield to Delph. Heathcliffe could be striding through the tussocks. He'd have his work cut out today. One minute, grit-blasted with freezing hail; then, opening beneath him, whole valleys glowing yellow in the sun.
It's been rather like that for us.
Three years ago today Trish Hornsey, Roger Bates and I bought the fledgling Inclusive Technology from French computer games giant, Infogrames (née Ocean Software). But Ocean Software, which had nurtured us as their new education division, had just themselves been bought by Infogrames. Infogrames wanted to refocus on their core computer games business. For Infogrames it was close Inclusive or sell. We bought.
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| Then and now. Teachers Roger Bates, Martin Littler and Trish Hornsey now joined by Chartered Accountant Helen Carr, Inclusive's Finance Director. | |
Eighteen months earlier a small team had waded out from the SEMERC/YITM/Thomas Nelson UK/International Thomson Publishing imbroglio to form Inclusive Technology.
This is how it happened:
Ten years earlier, in 1986, I had joined Manchester SEMERC as director of what was then a Government funded research agency. I had joined knowing that state funding would cease and the Centre close in March 1989.
Instead of closing, SEMERC had gained local support and management from Oldham Borough Council. Oldham had a leadership role in Special Needs and housed the Northern ACE Centre, headed by Roger Bates as well as hosting the national Micros for Special Needs Exhibition. On April 1st 1989, exactly twelve years ago SEMERC became successfully self-funding by launching its first software catalogue.
It was too successfully self-funding. Municipal trading is severely limited by English law and SEMERC was set to close for the second time. By March 1995 sales had grown to £1.2 million and were to reach £2.2 million a year later. The Oldham municipality had to sell its "not for profit" software business to Thomas Nelson, the UK book publishing arm of International Thomson Publishing (ITP). Thomas Nelson joined with Yorkshire Television to launch "Yorkshire International Thomson Multimedia" or "YITM".
YITM didn't suit me, YITM didn't suit SEMERC's development director, Trish Hornsey, or Roger Bates who had now joined SEMERC as Information Director. With other staff, we left, en masse, to form Inclusive Technology as the education division of Ocean Software while SEMERC became "Granada Learning SEMERC".
Ten Inclusive Technology Catalogues:
Other numbers junkies: Last month another fifty-five of you downloaded Inclusive Technology's 2000 Accounts. Just for you, I have included the statistics of our ten catalogues at the bottom of this article.
April 2001 sees the launch of our tenth catalogue. Catalogues are a dialogue. We include the resources we would use with students (five of our team and three of our directors are teachers). You have responded by buying and recommending some things much more than others. Obviously we listen. Where products are popular - like mouse alternatives or switch accessible software - we increase the range and variety we offer. Other lines are quietly dropped.
Sometimes we meet you at
exhibitions.
"Why don't you supply a little mouse for little
hands?"
"Because there is no demand for them."
"I'm demanding one!"
We had to go to Duluth on Lake Superior to find the right little mouse and tiny mouse. You were right. Hundreds of people want them.
Exhibitions are important to us. We need longer to listen. We now stage a "Special Needs Fringe" event (previously called "Not at BETT") in the Kensington Olympia Hilton next door to BETT. It is well worth us enticing you in with free coffee, buns, possibly a lunch-time buffet and certainly somewhere to sit down and chat.
We will be able to meet soon at the Reebok Stadium in Bolton for SpecialneedsIT conference which is part of Special Needs North. Here there are How-IT-Works seminars from all of the major companies. All of this is organised by our information and training company Inclusive Consultancy and Training, best known for leading the ICTS Syndicate in providing NOF training for Severe and Complex Special Educational Needs.
Also, and this is new, we have invited the Presidents or CEOs of the four most important American companies in our field, IntelliTools, Mayer-Johnson, Don Johnston and AbleNet, to meet you at the Reebok Stadium. They didn't need much persuading. British special educators are the world's most sophisticated users of ICT with learners who have special needs. They will want to learn from you too.
Martin Littler
9th April 2001
Catalogue statistics:
| pages | copies | features | products | sales per catalogue | |
| Spring 1997 | 16 | 80,000 | 105 | £46,370 | |
| Summer 1997 | 16 | 55,000 | 109 | £92,733 | |
| Autumn 1997 | 24 | 45,000 | 162 | £122,866 | |
| January 1998 | 32 | 50,000 | numbered | 222 | £473,595 |
| September 1998 | 32 | 55,000 | numbered | 201 | £369,762 |
| January 1999 | 32 | 60,000 | 190 | £970,730 | |
| September 1999 | 32 | 60,000 | 171 | £873,030 | |
| March 2000 | 40 | 65,000 | 201 | £1,132,605 | |
| October 2000 | 40 | 65,000 | drilled | 241 | £1,758,730 |
| April 2001 so far | 48 | 70,000 | drilled | 270 | £1,314,383 |