One title, Pinnacle’s Larry Crowne, was captioned and audio described internationally but not released here with access features, and a further seven titles were captioned internationally but not here.
The DVD titles released in Australia since November 2011 with audio description include:
Accessible Media, which was originally called the National Broadcast Reading Service, provides services for Canadians with vision or hearing impairment, learning disabilities and language barriers. The Accessible Channel or TAC-tv, which launched in 2009 and is the world’s only channel on which all programming is captioned and audio described, will now be known as AMI-tv. Accessible Media’s radio service, VoicePrint, will be rebranded as AMI-audio next month.
The formal announcement follows on from a July 2010 ruling by the King County Superior Court in the state of Washington that AMC can afford to provide the necessary equipment to show all caption-rendered movies with captions. AMC was ordered to do so within 90 days of conversion to digital projection. AMC initially appealed the order then made the verbal commitment to full captioning in August last year.
"This is a really exciting day for people who are blind or vision impaired in the Hunter region, said Lauren Henley, media access campaign leader for peak national consumer organisation Blind Citizens Australia (BCA).
