Blind or vision impaired

The Senate has supported a motion introduced by the Australian Greens Senator Rachel Siewert, calling on the Federal Government to amend the Broadcasting Services Act to include a requirement for all free-to-air and subscription television services to provide audio description.

Stephen Jolley, who has been blind since birth, has started a petition on Change.org, asking the Minister for Communications, Malcolm Turnbull, to change the broadcasting laws so that free-to-air television channels must provide audio description for blind and vision impaired people.

Access to media through audio description and captioning is well established through most of Europe, North America and the English-speaking world. However, the situation in other parts of the globe is very mixed. Reporting in Australia is, not suprisingly, biased towards English language developments and advances. What is happening in other parts of the world, especially in Asia?

The Connect Ability Challenge, which challenges developers to build accessible technology solutions for people with disabilities using only existing and affordable mainstream platforms, announced the winners of a USD$92,500 (AUD$125,381) prize pool last Monday.