The Disability Discrimination Act 1992 (Cth) (DDA) has been the major policy instrument which has provided access in to cinemas and DVDs in Australia. There are no legislative requirements for access in these media.
The initiative would see 1% of all TV ownership transactions from 2010 to 2015 allocated to a not-for-profit fund that would finance the transition to complete accessibility on all distribution platforms.
There is currently no legislation requiring audio description on Australian media. However, one of the recommendations of the Federal Government's Media Access Review final report, released in December 2010, was that there be a technical trial of audio description on the ABC.
The trial, which took place on ABC1, commenced on 5 August 2012, and continued for 13 weeks. During that time, an average of 2 hours of audio described programming was broadcast each evening.
