Mada is a not-for-profit organisation that shares many values and roles with Media Access Australia. Mada works directly with people with disabilities and focuses on developing resources and assistive technologies in the Arabic language. An early project was translating our sociABILITY: social media for people with disability guide into Arabic. Mada was established by the Supreme Council for Information and Communication Technology in 2010 and has additional support from Qatar Telecom, Vodafone Qatar, Qatar National Bank and Microsoft.
While in the Qatar capital Doha, Varley will present a professional seminar on broadcast accessibility for local television broadcasters, including the international news channel Al Jazeera. He will also be taking part in community accessibility events and meeting with the tertiary education sector.
“Accessibility is a worldwide issue and our earlier collaborations have been around English-language and Western-based organisations. The creation of Mada, which has ambitions to develop access across the Arab world, provides great opportunities for working together and sharing resources. The issues are the same and there is much we can learn from each other,” said Varley.
Media Access Australia will publish a broader profile on Mada and its work following Varley’s visit.
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