When the grant began, it was used to fund the captioning of entertainment videos, but it has evolved over the years and is now used to caption DVDs and online videos with an education or community focus. One of the biggest beneficiaries of the grant this year was Education Services Australia, which provides online videos that can be accessed by schools and used as curriculum material. This was mostly in the form of short film clips, including newsreels and other historical material from the National Film and Sound Archive.
“Professional captioning services can be a significant cost for small organisations,” said Chris Mikul, Project Manager at Media Access Australia, who looks after the day-to-day running of the grant. “One of the purposes of the grant is to support community organisations that may not have the funds to caption the videos they’ve produced.”
Cancer Council NSW, Autism Awareness Australia and Guide Dogs NSW/ACT were among the organisations which received funding in 2012. The grant has also been used to caption numerous education and training videos produced by organisations including Video Education Australia, Vocam, Realtime Health and the Rural Health Education Foundation.
Education Manager, Anne McGrath said,"The captioning grant provides essential support to Media Access Australia’s education program by assisting teachers and schools with access to captioned resources. When teachers are inspired to become captions champions through our CAP THAT! campaign or want to ensure access to captioned audiovisual resources in the classroom, like in our Classroom Access Project, we know that the building blocks for ongoing access are there.”
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