Sound Practice Terms & Conditions
Sound Practice is a virtual library of ideas that aims to support the provision of adult hearing rehabilitation.
Sound Practice is hosted by the British Society of Audiology (BSA). The database is maintained and further developed by the Adult Rehabilitation Interest Group (ARIG) who are an interdisciplinary group of hearing professionals. http://www.thebsa.org.uk/bsa-groups/group-ari/
This website is governed by these Terms and Conditions. Please read them now. By using the Site, you indicate that you accept the Terms and Conditions and that you agree to abide by them. If you are not willing to accept these Terms and Conditions you may not use the Site.
General
1. Aims and endorsements
The BSA does not endorse the ideas / interventions that have been included on Sound Practice but seeks to make the evidence base on each as accessible as possible so that professionals can make informed choices on which ideas / interventions are the most suitable for the adults with hearing loss they work with. Choice of the idea / interventions for individual or groups of adults will always rely on professional judgements. Each adult with hearing loss is different and decisions around most appropriate programmes of work are complex and dependent on detailed knowledge of context. Sound Practice aims to support informed decisions by adding to the available toolkit of knowledge and making this information open to practitioners.
Inclusion on Sound Practice therefore does not constitute an endorsement from the moderating group or the BSA either for individual ideas / interventions or the organisations which produced them, view criteria. When an idea / intervention is accepted onto Sound Practice, the authors are provided with guidance, including suggested text to be used to describe their inclusion.
2. Access
If you choose to sign up and log in to Sound Practice you will set your own password as part of the security procedures. You must treat such information as confidential and you must not disclose it to any third party.
3. Disclaimer
The Site and its contents are for general information only and are provided “as is”. We make no warranties, representations or undertakings about:
- any of the content of the Site (including, without limitation, any as to the quality, accuracy, completeness or fitness for any purpose of such content); or
- any content of any other third party website referred to or accessed by hypertext link through the Site
We make no guarantees that the Site is free from so called computer viruses. It is strongly recommended that you check for such viruses before downloading it or its contents.
The BSA does not and cannot guarantee the interpretation and application of the submissions. The BSA cannot be held responsible for any errors or omissions, and the BSA accepts no liability whatsoever for any loss or damage howsoever arising.
4. Links
Links to third party websites are for your convenience only. Such websites are operated and controlled by third parties and their inclusion does not imply any endorsement or approval by the BSA of the materials on such websites.
5. Liability
The BSA accepts no liability for any claims, penalties, loss or expenses arising from: any reliance placed on the content of the Site; the use or inability to use the Site; the downloading of any materials from the Site; or any unauthorised access to or alteration to the Site.
6. Copyright
The content of the Site (including, but not limited to all text and artwork) is protected by copyright. The copyright is owned by the BSA or is otherwise licensed from a third party for use by the BSA. However, the aim of Sound Practice is to share resources and the BSA does not own the copyright of any of the submissions on the site. These are owned by the author(s) and the organisation employing the authors. By agreeing to share these resources the authors are aware that other parties may chose to download their submission and use the intellecutal property provided.
All other rights which are not specifically granted are reserved relating to the Sound Practice website. This is exclusively concerning the website artwork and content, but does not cover the submitter materials provided (which hold their own intellectual property rights and copyright). The expectation for Sound Practice is that documents will be uploaded to the website to help with the idea or innovation being implemented elsewhere.
You may view or download any part of the Site for private purposes, but you are not permitted, without our permission, to:
- store the Site, or any part of the Site, for any other purpose;
- print copies of the Site, or any part of the Site, for any other purpose;
- reproduce, copy or transmit the Site, or any part of the Site, in any way, for any other purpose or in any other medium.
7. Privacy Policy
Please read our Privacy Policy for details of how we use information about you. http://www.thebsa.org.uk/privacy/
8. Users
If you sign up and log in to the Site, to review the ideas and interventions in the library you are a user.
9. Evidence base disclaimer
All the ideas and interventions have not been reviewed in terms of the evidence base and it is the responsibility of each user to critically appraise the information provided and make a judgement about the quality of the idea or intervention and whether it would be worth exploring within your own practice or service.
Evidence about what has worked in the past offers no guarantee that an approach will work in all circumstances. Users are encouraged to look at all the information on each intervention to ensure they understand all details and for which circumstances it is will be most beneficial.
10. Acknowledgement of sources
If a user decides to trial an idea or innovation they will have access to the download documents from that example. As a user if you download and use these documents it is good practice to acknowledge the source it came from if sharing this publicly.
11. Providing feedback
All users are encouraged to provide feedback after trialling an idea or innovation in the feedback box below the example.
This feedback will be moderated and should focus on the difference it made in your practice and how others could learn further from you;
- The feedback should not be about the concept of the idea itself, unless you are commenting on how it made a difference to your service;
- All feedback should be respectful and any posts which are deemed to fall outside of these terms may / will be removed.
Submitters
If you upload an idea or innovation to the Site, you are considered to be a submitter.
12. Contact after a submission
Submitters will have contact from ARIG within 15 working days about any submission uploaded to the Site by the Lead Moderator for your submission.
13. Permission to share
Through uploading the idea or innovation, as a submitter you are giving the BSA permission to share what has been submitted.
As a submitter, you recognise that one of the key principles of Sound Practice is sharing of ideas and this also includes the sharing of documents relating to this idea / innovation. This is restricted to the terms laid out in section 9.
This includes, but is not exclusive to:
- Obtaining consent for this example to be submitted by the Head of Department / Manager of the Practice / most senior clinician / line manager
- Seeking permission to share the documentation in the public domain
Unless you otherwise specify in your submission all documents will be saved in an editable format such as Word / Excel so the user is able to fully share the examples of good practice. If you are not happy to share word documents / excel sheets or documents in raw, editable forms then please make this clear on the submission form and they will be uploaded in PDF format.
14. Uploading material to the Site
Other than personally identifiable information, which is covered under our Privacy Policy, any material you transmit or post to the Site shall be considered non-confidential and non-proprietary. We shall have no obligations with respect to such material and we shall have the right to use, copy, distribute and disclose to third parties any such material for any purpose.
You are prohibited from posting or transmitting to or from the Site any material:
- That is threatening, defamatory, obscene, indecent, seditious, offensive, pornographic, abusive, liable to incite racial hatred, discriminatory, menacing, scandalous, inflammatory, blasphemous, in breach of confidence, in breach of privacy or which may cause annoyance or inconvenience;
- For which you have not obtained all necessary approvals;
- Which is technically harmful (including, without limitation, computer viruses, logic bombs, Trojan horses, worms, harmful components, corrupted data or other malicious software or harmful data)
- You may not misuse the Site (including, without limitation, by hacking)
We have the right to remove any material or posting you make on the Site if, in our opinion, such material does not comply with the provisions set out above or for any other reason whatsoever. In addition, we shall fully co-operate with any law enforcement authorities or court order requesting or directing us to disclose the identity or locate anyone posting any material in breach of the provisions set out above.
15. Users feedback
Through uploading the idea, intervention, or innovation you are agreeing for other users to make comment on your idea /intervention/innovation. This is restricted to the terms laid out in section 10.
16. Moderators role and powers
Once a submission has been made, it will be sent to the ARIG moderators to review and process.
The moderators are not reviewing the evidence, critically appraising the quality of the idea or innovation, or testing its applicability in other settings. The moderators are just ensuring the idea/innovation/intervention is within the scope and criteria of Sound Practice. If, however your submission is a highly innovative proposal that is deemed to have risk your proposed submission may be escalated to the full ARIG steering group for consideration (which may impact on the length of time for your submission to be processed.)
The moderators may make small edits to your submission, but only in terms of spelling, grammar and readability. They will not change the content of the submission without liaising with you over the changes they feel are needed.
The moderators reserve the right to decline your submission or remove a submission which has previously been published or a user if it is deemed appropriate to do so. An explanation detailing the reasons why your submission was declined will be provided to you.
The decision from the moderators can be appealed. In these circumstances the submission will be sent to the full ARIG steering group for consideration. The decision of this group is final.
Changes to T & Cs
The BSA reserves the right to amend or replace the Terms and Conditions at any time. If we make any substantial changes, we will notify you by posting a prominent notice on the Site.
Contact us
If you wish us to delete your details from our records, please e-mail us at the address below. If you have any questions about our terms & conditions or our privacy policy, or you would like to make a complaint please contact us at bsaarig@gmail.com