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Graeme Innes celebrates the DDA's 20th birthday
Transcript
7 April 2013
Roberta: It’s the 20th anniversary of the Disability Discrimination Act, or DDA this year. Today we’re chatting with Graeme Innes, Disability Discrimination Commissioner. Hello Graeme.
Graeme: Hello Roberta, great to talk with you.
Roberta: And with you again. Now how important has the DDA been for Australians with a disability?
Graeme: I think it’s been very important. I think it hasn’t been the perfect tool but it has meant that many people, many hundreds of people will have changed their lives by lodging DDA complaints or by benefiting from the lodgement of such complaints by other people or from the enactment of standards under the legislation in various areas.
And so it’s meant that the lives of many Australians have improved.
Roberta: Graeme, tell us about the 20 Years: 20 Stories project.
Graeme: We thought it was important Roberta to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the DDA, look at how people had used the DDA to change their lives. But also look at people whose lives had not changed where the DDA perhaps hadn’t worked as well or areas where it hadn’t yet touched the lives of people with disability.
And so I worked with the corporate and philanthropic sector to raise just over $200,000 with which we made 20 short films, five minute films, showing 20 stories of how the DDA had changed people’s lives. And not surprisingly, we called it 20 Years: 20 Stories.
Roberta: So what sorts of cases do the films focus on, and maybe you could give me an example?
Graeme: They are a broad range of stories of people who’ve lodged complaints. One example would be well known to your listeners, would be the case of Maguire and SOCOG. This is where Bruce Maguire wanted to obtain the ticket book for the Olympic Games in Braille so that he could go through it with his children and choose which events they attended. And he also wanted to be able to look at the results on the website with his children in the various areas of sport in which they were interested.
He wasn’t able to do either of those things because the ticket book wasn’t available in Braille and the website was not accessible. And he, after attempting to get SOCOG to change that and them saying no, he lodged a complaint under the Disability Discrimination Act. And SOCOG were directed to make the website accessible and to provide him with a ticket book and they still didn’t do that.
And so he went back, after the games, he went back to court and he was awarded $20,000 in damages. So that was a real wakeup call in 2000 to a whole lot of webmasters and website operators. And as a result, many dozens, if not hundreds, of websites in Australia were made accessible.
Another example Roberta is my own case. I have been speaking with Railcorp here in Sydney about making next station announcements on trains. And I eventually, some four or five years after they were required to do so by the transport standards which were passed under the DDA, I went to the Chief Executive Officer and to the Minister and said look, you’ve got six months. If you don’t fix this problem every time I travel on a train where there’s not an announcement I’m going to lodge a DDA complaint. And I did that.
They wouldn’t settle the matter with me, unfortunately. And so I had to pursue that through to a court hearing and I won that case earlier this year. And that has implications, not just for Railcorp, but for transport operators across Australia, who will now by that decision be required to provide next stop announcements on all their transport vehicles. And if they’re not doing that then they’re in breach of the transport standards and people should lodge a DDA complaint.
Roberta: I must say, I travel by the train lately a lot and they do do that, and I’m just thinking what a wonderful thing that you and Bruce Maguire have done to bring this to the attention of people who should be doing it anyway.
Graeme: Well, you know, in conjunction with a whole lot of other advocates on this issue Roberta, I don’t claim to be the one single person who fixed this problem. I mean, I know Barry Chapman was lodging these sorts of complaints 30 years ago and so it’s been an ongoing advocacy campaign by BCA and Vision Australia and similar organisations.
But it is an opportunity now for people to take advantage of this and if their transport provider is not doing as they should be, then to lodge complaints and get that rectified.
Roberta: Now coming back to the films, are they accessible to people who are blind, who are vision impaired?
Graeme: Oh they absolutely are. Of course, being films about the DDA, we wouldn’t make them without captions and audio description. So we’ve done both of those things. And they’re available on our website. And there’s a 20 Years: 20 Stories link towards the bottom of that page, that front page of the website. They are also available on DVD and we’re also arranging screenings of the film around Australia. So if you follow me on Twitter or Facebook, just look for me at Graeme Innes, where we’ll be announcing where those screenings will take place.
There’s already been screenings in Brisbane, they’re planned in Sydney, Melbourne and in other places around the country.
Roberta: Now how can people use the DDA if they have a discrimination complaint?
Graeme: Well people can lodge complaints under the DDA if they feel that they’ve been discriminated against, treated less favourably on the grounds of their disability. They need to send an email to newcomplaints@humanrights.gov.au. Just basically setting out the story; how you’ve been discriminated, what happened, when it happened, who did it, whether there was anyone else there at the time and as best as possible, what was said. So telling the story.
And we investigate that complaint and we attempt to resolve it by conciliation. And in fact we’re successful in over the half the cases Roberta, in finding a conciliated resolution to complaints.
We get about a thousand complaints a year under the Disability Discrimination Act, and there’s about another 800 to 1000 lodged under equivalent State legislation. So there are that go to court, as did Bruce’s case and my case, but that’s really the exception to the rule. Most of them are sorted out in that investigation and conciliation stage.
Roberta: Well thank you for all of that today Graeme, it’s been interesting talking to you again as usual and I hope we’ll talk again soon.
Graeme: I look forward to it Roberta, thank you very much.
Roberta:I’ve been speaking with Graeme Innes, Disability Discrimination Commissioner. And this segment was brought to you by Media Access Australia, and Media Access Australia are supporters of this program.
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