From information presented at the meeting by MAA, it was clear that captioning by AVSDA members has not increased since 2006, when the Australian Human Rights Commission hosted round table discussions between distributors and accessibility groups.
After general discussions about the issues raised, outcomes of the meeting include:
- AVSDA to write to industry participants and stakeholders regarding the importance of including captioning on DVDs to raise awareness and further educate the supply chain;/
- AVSDA members to meet at least once annually to specifically discuss matters of media access and labelling standards. These meetings may include briefings from Media Access Australia and the Deafness Forum as appropriate;
- That the Deafness Forum and AVSDA work together with TV broadcasters to ensure caption files from broadcast are available to all DVD distributors at an acceptable rate (particularly the public broadcasters);
- AVSDA to talk with the Screen Producers Association of Australia about the Screen Australia funding and captioning deliverables so this feature is mandated and accounted for early in the DVD build process; and
- AVSDA, Deafness Forum and MAA to jointly approach SBS about captioning its TV programs released to DVD.
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