Inclusion

Commentary by Anne McGrath, Education Manager, Media Access Australia

The education community has been anticipating the Australian Government’s newly released Review of the Australian Curriculum. The Review is well considered, comprehensive in nature and holds interest for all teachers, including those who work with students with disability and diverse learning needs.

Despite an often slow and mixed development history, the choice and availability of assistive technology to help people with disabilities access PCs and other computing devices has never been greater.

The Australian-based access company Ai-Media, in collaboration with the University of Melbourne and the UK charity Nesta, has been working on a project which looks at the benefits of real-time captioning and transcriptions in British classrooms.

The next round of the Federal Government’s repeal red tape campaign is due to take place next month and is likely to include captioning issues. We have contacted a number of interest groups including Federal politicians with our recommendations on how repealing red tape could benefit the operation of the captioning elements of the Broadcasting Services Act.