Katie started her experience at Media Access Australia as an intern in the marketing department, and is now our Marketing Communications Assistant.
What have been a few of the highlights of 2010 for you in your area of access?
Being a relatively new member of the Media Access Australia staff, my highlights of 2010 are packed into the past couple of months.
On a personal level, a big highlight for me has been attending focus groups that we hosted as part of a plan to increase our engagement with various groups and communities. This meant talking with people who are Deaf, hearing impaired, blind and vision impaired. It was an opportunity to hear real world feedback on the barriers faced by people with disabilities when it comes to media and the difference that access to media can make in their everyday lives. From this, Media Access Australia’s vision became much more relevant for me in my everyday work, as I could see exactly the sorts of issues that we are trying to address.
Being involved in the overarching plan that the focus groups were a part of has also been a highlight for me. Focusing on creative strategy and design, it includes a number of exciting new developments for the near future, particularly the launch of our new and improved website in February 2011, which will meet international best practice for website accessibility.
What was one of the challenges faced in your area in 2010?
Getting my head around all this technological stuff! There are so many gizmos and updates that can improve your access to media. While it can be overwhelming at first, it is certainly worthwhile in the end. Look at me – I downloaded my first app for my iPhone just yesterday. (It was ‘Dragon Dictation’, which allows you to speak into your phone and it types out what you say – very cool!)
The Media Access Australia site is a good place to keep up-to-date with accessible developments in the ever-changing world of technology.
How do you see accessibility improving in 2011?
I think accessibility will improve in many ways in 2011. The government has shown significant commitments to improving accessibility, as revealed in the recent Media Access Review, as well as its plan to improve the accessibility of all government websites to ‘AA’ standard (by the WCAG 2.0 guidelines) by 2014. This will certainly put accessibility more on the agenda in Australia and help raise awareness of the ways in which media can be made more accessible for people with disabilities through technology.
As well, the improvements made by organisations such as Apple in the accessibility features of its devices shows promise for continuing advancements in 2011.
What’s your top pick for a gift with accessible features this festive season?
I would recommend a night out for a captioned theatre performance. Go Theatrical’s theatre captioning website provides detailed lists of theatre productions throughout Australia that have captioning available.
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