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Graeme Innes on the NBN and disability
Transcript
19 May 2013
Roberta: We’re joined today by Disability Discrimination Commissioner and National Broadband Network Champion, Graeme Innes, to talk about how high-speed internet can benefit people with a disability. Welcome, Graeme.
Graeme: Thanks, Roberta, great to talk with you again.
Roberta: Now, what is the National Broadband Network or NBN for our listeners?
Graeme: Well, it’s basically a network of fibre cable which carries data at a much faster speed, which is being rolled out around Australia, and it will provide all of us with much better and faster internet access.
Roberta: So, Graeme, why is the NBN good for people who are blind or vision impaired?
Graeme: Well, it’s good for people broadly with a disability for a range of reasons. It’s good for people who are deaf or have a hearing impairment who can use video Auslan for signing and get more access to Auslan services. It’s good for people with disability who may have a health or health-related issue because they can have remote consultation, get more input from doctors and other health professionals. It’s good for people with mobility disability who may choose to telework rather than having to get through all the barriers that our society puts up for people with such disability because all of that process will work faster and more smoothly. And it’s particularly good for people who are blind or have low vision because of the availability of data more quickly and also the way that we can interact with such data. That is the way we can manage and use it. Can I give you one example, Roberta? I’ve just seen – and this device is still in trial stage, so it’s not available yet and you can’t rush out and buy one – but I’ve just seen a device which uses a smart phone, an android phone, and interacts with data, being newspapers and websites. It interacts with voice commands. So I operate it by voice and I say to it, “What newspapers do you have today?” and it tells me. And I’ll say “Read The Australian; read the sports section; read articles on cricket or read the politics; read the news and features section.” It will list the headlines and it will read those articles and it will do the same for websites such as the ABC website. Now that voice recognition and much of the work of that device is done in the Cloud. In other words, it’s done virtually, somewhere on the internet, and it will be able to work much more effectively if we’ve got much faster broadband speed.
Roberta: Wow, that sounds fantastic.
Graeme: Yeah, I’m very excited.
Roberta: Yeah, I’ll bet you are.
Graeme: I said to the guy, “I want one now.”
Roberta: So, Graeme, how did you become an NBN Champion?
Graeme: Look, the NBN is what different gauge railways were to Australia a century ago. It’s just a piece of infrastructure that we have to have and in 10 or 15 years we’ll all wonder why there was all this discussion about it and why we just didn’t get on and do it. And one of the things that I was concerned about with respect to the NBN, Roberta, was that there was all this talk about faster movie speeds, movie download speeds, and better access for business and how it would help the Australian economy in all sorts of ways. But disability was the untold story of the NBN and I’m lucky enough in my role to be able to talk to ministers and ministers’ advisors and I put this view to Stephen Conroy, and to Stephen Conroy’s office, and I said, “Look, you’re selling the NBN to industry and to people who might want to download movies. You’re not selling one of the real benefits. There’s an untold story here about disability.” And he said to me, “Well, will you come on board and tell that story.” And I said I’d love to.
Roberta: So what do fibre-to-home and fibre-to-node mean and how do they compare?
Graeme: Well, so the fibre is cable which allows the data to travel much faster than the current copper network that we’ve got, which carries our phone and data transfers at the moment and, of course, which is aging and becoming less and less effective and is also a slower means of carrying that data. So fibre to the home means that the fibre cable actually goes to where people live and we can all get that. So it will come to where our router or our computer or our home wireless network starts, or whatever sort of network we have, or our office network starts. Fibre to the node means that the fibre cable runs to a little station or point on the street where you live somewhere and then we rely on the old copper network to get the data the rest of the way. Inevitably that’s going to be a slower process, so we’ll lose some of the advantages of the high-speed fibre cable. We’re slowing the data down.
Roberta: Well, thank you for all of that, Graeme. It’s really interesting to hear all of that. I know that we’ll be talking about it as things go along in the future.
Graeme: Thanks, Roberta, always great to talk with you.
Roberta: And you. I’ve been speaking with Graeme Innes, the Disability Discrimination Commissioner and National Broadband Network Champion. This interview is brought to you by Media Access Australia, a supporter of this program.