National Week of Deaf People 2018 Activities and Events

All activities listed here are all registered through Deaf Australia. There may be other activities that is happening around Australia and we do not have this information. Activities may be subjected to change, please regularly check websites for updates.
21 September 6pm – 9pm. 
Wine Cheese Night
Ephpheta Centre, 4 Turner Street, Punchbowl, NSW.
RSVP required
Download Flyer here
23 – 29 September – 9am – 5pm (Daily) 
‘Healsville Sanctuary Celebrates National Week of Deaf People’
at Healsville Santuary, Badger Creek Road, Badger Creek, Victoria 3777.
Auslan interpreter will be onsite at Healesville Santucary between 11am and 3pm each day.
Website Link
23 September (5 events) 
Deaf Market (10am – 3pm)
Front Oval, Deaf Children Australia
597 St Kilda Road, Melbourne Victoria
Download Flyer here
Adelaide Celebration (10am – 12 noon) 
University of South Australia
Jeffery Smart Building, Level 1, Hindley Street, Adelaide, South Australia
For catering purpose, please RSVP
Download Flyer here
Deaf Community BBQ (11am – 4pm) 
South Australian Museum Front Lawns
North Terrace, Adelaide, South Australia
Download Flyer here
Auslan Guided Tours (11.30am, 1.30pm and 2.30pm)
South Australian Museum
North Terrace, Adelaide, South Australia
Tours have limited spaces available per sessions, register for a tour when arrive.
Download Flyer here
Family Picnic Day (10 am – 3pm) 
Jo Whearley All Abilities Play Space
Esplande, Dalkeith, Western Australia
Free admission, BYO – BBQ
Download Flyer here
25 September 
Professional Evening with Dr Paddy Ladd (6pm – 8pm) 
University of Western Australia
Alexander Lecture Theatre
Admission fee applies
Download Flyer here
27 September (2 events) 
The Silent Child (Open – Captioned), followed by Deaf Awareness (4.30pm – 6.00pm)
Mirboo North Library
Ridgeway, Mirboo North, Victoria 3871
Free – booking essential
Download Flyer here
Alpha (Open – Captioned) (6pm for 7 pm start) 
Hoyts Carousel
1382 Albany Highway, Cannington, Western Australia
Admission fee applies
Download Flyer here
28 September 
May the Best Team Win! (6.30pm – 10.30pm) 
Tuart Hill Community Centre
164 Cape Street, Tuart Hill, Western Australia
Admission fee applies
Download Flyer here
29 September 
Bindi Bindi Dreaming Workshop (10am – 1pm) 
Tuart Hill Community Centre
164 Cape Street, Tuart Hill, Western Australia
Admission fee applies
Additional information here
 
 

Deaf Australia is conducting a survey on Deaf Acknowledgment.
The survey includes three (3) versions of the Deaf Acknowledgement and are asking the members of the Deaf Community to select one. The version with a majority will then go to Annual General Meeting on 27 October 2018 (Canberra) to vote for Deaf Acknowledgement.
Please go to Survey Monkey and complete the Survey (survey includes Auslan videos).
Survey close on Friday 19 October 2018 at midnight.
Thank you.
 

Media Release – Hearing Health Priority not Supported – 17 Aug 2018
The Australian Government has responded to and do not support a recommendation from the Standing Committee on Health, Aged Care and Sport’s Report in making Hearing Health as National Health Priority. However, the Australian Government recognised there are number of issues of national importance.
3.9 million of Australians have some form of deafness in varying degrees. This large number is a significant concern where there are insufficient infrastructure and transparency of providers comes into the equation costing hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars over the last decade.
Deaf Australia acknowledge the needs for a more cohesive and mainstream system that calls for better accountability and fairness for everyone. However, Deaf Australia is extremely disappointed that the Committee’s view of Auslan (Sign Language) is consigned to interpreting support and not as a language or communication mode that will enhance a persons’ wellbeing whilst reinforcing deafness as medical model of disability.
The Committee’s lack of understanding of the social model is reflected in the language and recommendations.

• The focus on deafness as a hearing deficit rather than, as it for members of Deaf Australia, an essential part of linguistic and cultural identity;
• The Committee’s use of ‘Development Delay’ refers the development of speech and listening’ rather than overall development;
• The lack of reference to cognitive delay and social delay caused by lack of exposure to accessible language (e.g. signed language); and
• There is no recommendation for deaf people aged over 65, who cannot access NDIS and therefore have extremely limited access to sign language interpreting and therefore to participation in the broader community.

In addition, the Australian Government supports the Committee’s recommendation that listening and speech language therapy, and speech pathology be included in the Medicare Benefits.
Deaf Australia fails to understand why these services be included in the Medicare Benefits as they do not eliminate, reduce or minimise person’s hearing loss. Like Auslan, these services are communication tools and strategies that enables the individual to effectively communicate with others and does not necessarily improve the person’s hearing health or wellbeing, therefore, these services are not medical services. For this reason, Deaf Australia request the Australian Government to reverts its support.
Australian hearing system is already very much focused on supporting parents of deaf children to learn to speak and listen, yet where is the informed decision making for parents of deaf children, when even this Committee fails to recognised the social model of disability and the inherent benefits of sign language for deaf people?
“The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, to which Australia is a signatory, gives deaf people the right to sign language, the right to participate in the community, the right to access information in our sign language – yet our Government, despite the implementation of the NDIS, is still stuck in a 1950s- era understanding of disability,” said Mr Kyle Miers, Chief Executive of Deaf Australia. “Australia’s commitment to ‘hearing health’ simply cannot be considered fair or equitable when deaf adults, and deaf children and their parents, are subject to a purely medical model of disability, which privileges hearing and speech over access to sign language.”
Deaf Australia is calling the Australian Government to ensure that all deaf adults, and all deaf children and their parents, have access to Auslan, have access to health information in Auslan, and are provided with objective and impartial information about deafness and the deaf community, based on social model of disability.
Reports:
Australian Government Response to the Standing Committee on Health, Aged Care and Sport
Supplementary Information: Appendix 1

Deaf Australia calls on the Government to suspend the tender process for the delivery of the National Relay System citing inadequate consultation with user groups. Today is a final day for Request for Tender (RFT) for the delivery of the National Relay Service commencing in January 2019.

The Federal Government has submitted that the National Relay Service is merely a ‘safety-net’ for its users who have access to “new and emerging mainstream technologies”.  A submission which contradicts the NRS consumers’ view that National Relay Service is an ESSENTIAL service – as such, all services must be 24/7, including the Video Relay Service. Instead, the government wants deaf, deafblind, hard of hearing and people with speech impairment to use the National Relay Service as an ALTERNATIVE to unproven and untested ‘mainstream technology’.
‘Communication is an essential right for everyone; yet it seems that Government believes that deaf, deafblind, hard of hearing and people with speech impairment do not need to have the same rights as everyone else’– said Mr Kyle Miers, Chief Executive of Deaf Australia. ‘Deaf people who use sign language need the equivalency of full access to communication using the Video Relay Service which currently operates on limited hours. The present tender offers no assurances whatsoever that this will be the case.
At the recent Senate Estimate, the Department of Communication advised Senator Steele-John that a change of regulation to use ‘mainstream communication’ will be expected to be introduced in end of June to mid-July 2018.
‘During the one and only consultation, the Department advised that the mainstream communication will have no bearing on the National Relay Service, yet it plays a significant part in the provisioning of the National Relay Service’, said Mr Miers. ‘To have this tender close BEFORE the approval of the regulation is like ‘putting the cart before the horse’ and leaves no choice for Parliamentarians but to approve it.’
‘12,000 signatures collected on a petition on Change.org clearly shows that the Government and the Department of Communications has failed to listen, consult and accommodate our needs’ said Mr Miers.
Deaf Australia and NRS users are very concerned that the Government and the Department of Communication are risking lives with no assurance of equivalency of full access and the use of unproven and untested mainstream communication as preferred methods.
For these reasons, Deaf Australia calls on the Government and the Department to suspend the tender process until the Government and the Department properly consult with NRS users and peak organisations to create an NRS Service level obligations that satisfies everyone.

Media Release – 31 May 2018

Today (24 April, 2018), the National Relay Service (NRS) users called their MP to express their service concerns in the Australian Government’s Request for Tender (RFT) for the next National Relay Service contract, a service that will see NRS slip from the world best to potentially the world world’s worst relay service.
Last week on the ABC’s Q and A, Minister for Communication and the Arts, Mitch Fifield, declared that “a range of options … many of those free or at no cost” will be a viable means for National Relay Service users. This dynamic shift means that the government expects that those options should be considered an important alternative to the National Relay Service as a cost saving strategy.
The NRS Coalition demands the Australia government provide evidence that those free or cheap options are tested and proven technologies before introducing to the NRS. To date, this evidence has not been provided to the NRS Coalition.
WhatsApp, Messenger, online chat and other various mainstream communication applications are all non real-time communication technologies and cannot duplicate nor replicate telecommunication equivalency that NRS users require – that is, real-time service.
“With a reduction from the current cost of delivering the service from $32M to a cap of $22m per annum and increase reliance on mainstream communications provides no guarantee of a 24/7 service that NRS users require”, says Kyle Miers, spokesperson for the NRS Coalition. “Evidence to support alternative means is lacking and is in no way an assurance for NRS users to trust this tendering process.”
NRS Coalition calls for the Government to provide evidence that mainstream communications will replicate the National Relay Service in its ‘real-time’ functionalities. If it does not, then the Government is discriminating NRS users from the equivalency on a 24/7 basis.
NRS Coalition has established a petition on Change.org that calls the government to cease the tendering process to ensure that our assurances are met. The petition is on track to obtain 2,000 supporters.
For further information about NRS Coalition’s position, please visit www.nrs247.org.au.
[minimal_icon style=”download” url=”https://deafaustralia.org.au/wp-content/uploads/Media-Release-24-April-2018.pdf” target=”_self” lightbox_content=”” lightbox_description=””][/minimal_icon]Media Release 24 April 2018

Minister for Communications and the Arts, in response to an Australian Sign Language video question on the ABC’s Q and A program last night, pledged that Australians who are deaf, deafblind, hearing and/or speech impaired will have the service they need when the Government implements the next National Relay Service (NRS) contract.

The question, submitted by Deaf Australia CEO Kyle Miers, on behalf of coalition of NRS user organisations, asked Minister Fifield how the government would be able to assure the NRS community that no services would be cut back given that the current cost of providing the NRS is in excess of $32 million per annum and the recently released NRS request for tender has capped the service funding at $22 million per annum for the next 3 years. Questioning how a 30% reduction in funding can ensure that the services will continue on a 24/7 basis.
While Minister Fifield stated that there are new and merging mainstream technologies that many NRS users may be able to access instead of relying on the NRS, Mr Miers has today said, “People with disability are already using mainstream technologies as a first choice”, adding “the high usage of NRS services indicates that there are no adequate mainstream services suitable for many NRS users’. The NRS service with the highest take-up is captioned telephony where a hard-of-hearing person speaks their part of the conversation and reads the text of the other person’s response in addition to using their residual hearing. Mr Miers pointed out that there is no mainstream equivalent service for these NRS users and that few alternative technologies provide the real-time equivalence of a phone call.
Mr Miers also said that Minister Fifield incorrectly stated that the NRS has always been funded at $22 million per annum. “The $22 million funding cap was introduced in the current contract. Previously, the NRS was funded on a cost-recovery basis funded by the NRS levy impost on Telecommunications providers” said Mr Miers, noting that the Government has covered the funding shortfall in part from a drastic reduction in the NRS outreach service. Mr Miers asserts that “The NRS, as an essential communications bridge for many Australians with disability, needs to be provided on a cost-recovery basis and not capped at some arbitrary amount”.
In a follow-up question on the Q and A program Mr Miers asked Minister Fifield if he would pledge on National television that NRS users would not be worse -off as a result of the current tender process. The Minister answered in the affirmative, pledging that NRS users would have the service they need.
Mr Miers and the NRS community will be pressing the Government to ensure that it delivers on the Ministers pledge.

Australia’s National Relay Service (NRS) has been one of the world’s best relay services since 1995 however, on 4 April 2018, the Australian Government released a Request for Tender (RFT) for the next NRS contract, a tender that will see the NRS slip from the world’s best to potentially the world’s worst relay service.

Consumers who are deaf, hard of hearing, deafblind or who have speech impairment rely on the National Relay Service as a natural bridge to vital services and the wider community. The Government now sees the NRS as a ‘safety-net’ rather than the equivalent phone service for consumers with disability as it has traditionally been.
Australia’s NRS consumer organisations have repeatedly made key recommendations to improve the NRS however; it appears that none of those recommendations have been incorporated into the Government’s recently released tender documents.
In 2016-17, the actual cost of operating the National Relay Service was close to $32m a year. The RFT proposes a $22m per annum cap on the service for the three years of the new contract. This does not support the recommendations made by consumer organisations in which the NRS needs to be funded on a cost recovery basis.
While access to emergency services remains a 365 days/24 hours requirement, the RFT does not stipulate operating hours required for all other services. This puts at risk those current relay services which are operating at 365/24 and critically ignores the recommendation that Auslan Video Relay become a 365/24 service.
The Outreach Program, a vital community education and NRS training program, dramatically de-funded in 2017 and will not be reintroduced in the next NRS contract.
Additionally, the new contract will require all deaf, hard of hearing, deafblind and who have speech impaired relay users to register to use the NRS, however, people wanting to contact these relay users will not need to register to use the service. Many NRS users believe this is a breach of fundamental disability anti-discrimination principles – requiring only people with disability register in order to access an essential service.
Kyle Miers, Chief Executive of Deaf Australia, said ‘The Government and Department of Communications took no notice of consumer’s concerns with the essential service’, adding ‘the new National Relay Service will not address the issues of isolation and social exclusion’.
Australian NRS users call on the Government to ensure the NRS of the future does not decrease their access to this vital service.
To view consumer’s recommendations, please visit this link (https://deafaustralia.org.au/wp-content/uploads/Coalition-Position-Paper.pdf).