Complaints

The following pages should not be taken as legal advice under any circumstances.

Individuals make complaints about a wide range of media accessibility issues. 

The most common issue which is referred to Media Access Australia is a lack of, or poor quality, captioning services on television programmes which have legislative or Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) obligations to provide them. 

The easiest way to make a complaint about poor quality or absent television captions is to use the online complaints forms for television. You can also use an online complaints form for DVDs which do not have access features.

Framing your complaint

In all cases of complaints, there are some general points you should cover. You should clearly address who you are complaining against, what they have done which you believe to be wrong, and (if you know), why it is wrong.

For example, if you know a television program is meant to be captioned, but it is not, then you should at least note the following:

  • The name of the program (eg ‘The 6.00 pm News on X Channel’);
  • The time-slot it was broadcast during (eg ‘6.00 – 6.30 pm timeslot, Eastern Standard Time’);
  • The channel it was broadcast on (be specific: if it is a multichannel or an analog channel, say this; eg ‘X Channel Digital 1’);
  • The precise issue (eg ‘the program was not shown with captions’, ‘the program had very few captions’, ‘the captions on the program had too many errors to be legible’);
  • The impact it had on you (eg ‘because there were no captions on the program, I could not understand what was happening’, or ‘because there were only intermittent captions, I could only understand parts of the program, and therefore I believe that I was discriminated against’); and
  • (If you know why) why the program was meant to be shown with captions (‘eg I know that news and current affairs programs must be captioned, but this one was not’).

If you are unsure about how to address an access issue you have, feel free to contact us at info@mediaaccess.org.au.

Complaining to the Australian Human Rights Commission

The AHRC, formerly the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC), is charged with reducing and eliminating human rights discrimination in Australia, and investigating instances of such discrimination. They do this often by addressing complaints directed to the AHRC.

For more information about what the AHRC does, visit our page on the Australian Human Rights Commission.

Complaining to the Australian Communications and Media Authority

The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) is the regulator charged, amongst other issues, with regulating and managing television broadcasts.

Individuals can make complaints directly to the ACMA if a television provider has breached their licence conditions, or if an issue which is covered by a Code of Practice (see our page on Television Regulation for more information) is not answered within 60 days or is answered unsatisfactorily.

For more information about what the ACMA does, visit our page on the Australian Communications and Media Authority.


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