Policy & Legislation

The campaign, which has been organised in conjunction with the Deafness Forum and Deaf Australia, comes after amendments to the Broadcasting Services Act, which took effect in June 2012, make captions of adequate quality a television license condition.

What is the conference about?

Languages and the Media combines academic research and practical information on the technologies and processes involved in delivering accessible media. The main components are separated into disability access, such as captioning, audio description and sign language; and translation using subtitles and dubbing.

Since the trial commenced on 5 August, an average of two hours of audio described content was broadcast each night. Other Australian programs described during the trial included Rake, Lowdown and The Mystery of a Hansom Cab.

“The ABC is to be commended for doing such a good job with the trial,” said Chris Mikul from Media Access Australia. “The quality of the audio description, particularly on the locally produced shows, has been terrific.”

A man walks into a bar.

Or is it a restaurant? Maybe it’s a train station. Or it could be a hospital and the man is actually a woman.

This is the process each of Australia’s 600,000 blind and vision impaired people go through when they watch TV. Dialogue, music and sound effects go a long way to tell a story. But without knowing what’s on screen, watching TV becomes a guessing game.

That’s where audio description (AD) comes in. AD is a track of narration which describes important visual elements of a TV show, movie or performance.

The winners in each category were:

BCA are interested in hearing about any issues people had trying to access the AD service, the quality of the description offered and what programs they would like described should any service be continued.

A joint initiative of Blind Citizens Australia, Vision Australia and Australian Communications Consumer Action Network, ‘It’s As Easy As ABC’ is encouraging people to send postcards to support the audio description service currently being trialled on the ABC until Sunday 4 November.

Campaigners say the trial is bringing access to over 600,000 Australians who are blind, vision impaired or can benefit from AD for the first time in Australian history.