The Survey of Disability, Ageing and Carers shows that the percentage of Australians with a disability has remained steady since at 18.5 per cent since the survey was last conducted in 2009.
While there is no official statistic for the number of blind and vision impaired children in Australia, a reasonable estimate is 4,000. The vast majority of these school age children attend mainstream schools.
The study explores how the challenge of providing access to media and technology for blind and vision impaired students is met across the public, Catholic and independent sectors. The study draws on interviews with mainstream and specialist teachers and service providers.
The Inclusion in Education: towards equality for students with disability paper is a literature review of over 170 pieces of research. The report identifies that the greatest barrier to children with disability being included at school is discriminatory attitudes.
The report states:
Real time captions provide equal access to education by offering a rolling transcript of a teacher’s voice. They are created by a professional captioner working in a remote location, who coverts an audio feed into text. While the school district makes American Sign Language interpreters available, as Harrington does not use sign language she requires captions.
