Academic Audio Transcription Ltd.

Shades of Noir (SoN) is proud to be partnered with Academic Audio Transcription Ltd (AAT) a specialist academic transcription services company with a social impact. Established in 2017 by disabled and chronically ill PhD candidate and ex-teacher Zara Bain, Academic Audio Transcription Ltd was established to provide flexible, accessible and fairly paid work for disabled, chronically ill and neurodivergent freelancers by connecting them with academic transcription and closed captioning work, whether for confidential research interviews or public-facing materials including lectures, workshops, conferences and online videos.

By offering these services and advocating for their use, AAT aims to increase uptake of these small but concrete measures toward improving accessibility in academic settings and beyond. Furthermore, by ringfencing profit from full-paying clients, AAT are able to support junior, underfunded and marginalized research and researchers by offering them discounts of up to 60% on AAT services.

In addition to partnering with the team at Shades of Noir, AAT works with a range of UK and international clients, including institutions like Cambridge University, University of Edinburgh, Cardiff University, UCL, the National Science Foundation, Mount Allison University, organisations like The Honor Frost Foundation, the Journal of Popular Music Studies, and the Society for Women In Philosophy UK, and disabled-person led charities and scholar- activist projects like Transport for All UK, and the Contra* Podcast Solidarity Chats series on disability, eugenics and COVID-19.

Zara Bain is a UK-based writer, researcher, and former school and university teacher who is currently undertaking a PhD in Philosophy, specialising in issues at the intersection of moral and political philosophy, social epistemology, critical philosophy of race/racism/whiteness and disability. Her dissertation provides the first monograph-length analysis of the concept of the ‘epistemology of ignorance’ in the work of Jamaican-American political philosopher, Charles W. Mills, with a specific focus on applying Mills’s work to the British context.

In addition to her research and work around critical engagements with whiteness and white supremacy, Zara’s experiences as a disabled person with lifelong chronic illness, both outside but especially inside higher education, mean that a disability-oriented approach informs much of her work. In 2013-2015 she founded group blog PhDisabled, dedicated to capturing the experiences, reflections and expertise of those navigating academia while disabled and chronically ill, especially as postgraduate researchers and beyond. Most recently, she has been organising with other disabled PhD students to argue for a range of crucial reasonable adjustments for disabled, chronically ill and neurodivergent PhD students in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, with their open letter featured in The Guardian.

In the future, Zara hopes to be able to return to teaching to resume her project of designing accessible, engaging teaching and learning materials for students of philosophy and anti- racist and decolonial projects, continuing the public work begun in her co-authored introductory book, Philosophy: A Crash Course — the very first popular introductory book in philosophy to include entries on ‘white supremacy’, ‘disability’ and ‘queer theory’. She also aims to write a number of scholarly books developing her PhD research, exploring oppressive forms of ignorance production in universities, the healthcare system, and a separate but related project drawing on her Anglo-Indian, Jewish and Italian heritage to examine the shifting terrain of whiteness and proximity to it.