Over the next two weeks we will speak to different members of staff with a total of twelve interviews addressing media access in Australia.
Media Access Australia’s CEO Alex Varley kicks off the interviews.
What have been a few of the highlights of 2010 for you in your area of access?
The end of the year saw the Media Access Review final report coming out with a Santa sack full of goodies, especially the very significant audio description trial on the ABC next year. As well as that we had the cinema access expansion brokered by Bill Shorten and Stephen Conroy that will see every major cinema accessible by 2014. Finally, the ABC brought accessibility to a whole new level online with the inclusion of captions on iView. That means that whatever is captioned on ABC TV can now be watched as catch-up TV.
What was involved in the cinema expansion?
A lot of hard, coordinated work by both deaf and blind organisations helping each other and pushing for a proper level of access. This was then backed by two very prominent politicians and resulted in a complete about-turn by the cinema industry to accept access. This wouldn’t have happened without new technology and Doremi’s CaptiView system allows closed captioning on all sessions. You could say it was one of those rare alignments of good consumer action, emboldened government, technology and industry leaders cluey enough to see an opportunity to properly deal with access.
What was one of the challenges faced in your area in 2010?
As the person at Media Access Australia that needs to focus on the big picture, it was making sure that our team kept driving those areas that were showing signs of promise, whilst not ignoring the more challenging access issues.
How do you see accessibility improving in 2011?
The release of the Government’s Media Access Review final report is a major catalyst for change, especially the audio description trial on the ABC and beefing up ACMA’s role in policing quality and compliance. Next year is also when pay television and free-to-air television should be operating under similar kinds of access rules, which makes perfect sense. The convergence review scheduled for next year will be the start of properly sorting out the issue of ensuring that accessible content stays accessible as it jumps from format to format (e.g. from TV to download to DVD to mobile phone highlights to TV rerun).
What’s your top pick for a gift with accessible features this festive season?
Spend some time with the kids at an accessible holiday movie – and you can find where they are playing on the Your Local Cinema website.
Top of page