The Media Access Review began under the Howard Government, and encompassed issues surrounding captioning, audio description, cinema and DVD accessibility, and emergency notification. The ‘Media access review final report’ proposed many positive recommendations, including:
ASTRA, whose members include FOXTEL and AUSTAR, earlier this year sought a five-year temporary exemption from the DDA, meaning that the AHRC would not hear complaints against the members of ASTRA on the grounds of disability discrimination. In exchange for the exemption, ASTRA had offered to raise the level of captioning on 65 of the 91 channels operated by its members.
The AHRC has previously granted such temporary exemptions to subscription television broadcasters.
Senator Ludlum asked ABC Managing Direct Mark Scott about its intentions to run a trial of audio description (AD) on its television services. A trial of AD had been raised in the Access to electronic media for the hearing and vision impaired: approaches for consideration, Discussion Report, 2009, which Senator Ludlum quoted. Mr Scott s
The AHRC has released submissions from Media Access Australia, the Deafness Council of Western Australia (DCWA), Vision Australia, the Deafness Forum of Australia, the Disability Discrimination Legal Service (Victoria) (DDLS), Deaf Australia and Accessible Arts NSW. To read the submission, go to the AHRC website.
To read summaries of these submissions, visit our enquiries and consultations section.
