TV & video

The Senate has supported a motion introduced by the Australian Greens Senator Rachel Siewert, calling on the Federal Government to amend the Broadcasting Services Act to include a requirement for all free-to-air and subscription television services to provide audio description.

Video-on-demand (VOD) or streaming video services are seen as the new way of delivering content to people where they can choose how and when to view that content, rather than rely on time-limited broadcast schedules. In Australia, services such as Netflix, ABC iview, Foxtel on Demand, Presto and Stan have gained lots of publicity and secured new customers quite rapidly.

Dr Katie Ellis, senior research fellow in the Department of Internet Studies at Curtin University, is calling for a new policy on audio description to be introduced in Australia to bring it in line with captioning.

Curtin University academic Katie Ellis will investigate disabled consumer experiences of subscription video-on-demand (VOD) services in Australia in her project ‘Accessing Video on Demand: A study of disability and streaming television’.