National Week of Deaf People is on again!

Make sure you check out the events that are happening in your area and be part of celebrating Deafness and Deaf culture! You’ll find a full list of the events listed with Deaf Australia here.

Last week, Deaf Australia sent out a media release regarding the Abbott Government’s decision to cut the Disability Ministry. We wanted the government to reinstate the Disability Ministry and also confirm their commitment to the Employment Assistance Fund (EAF) because we had heard concerns from our members about a rumour that the EAF may be reduced.

Deaf Australia is pleased to say that the Government, through DEEWR, have confirmed that the Coalition currently do not have plans to change the funding of the EAF program, particularly the Auslan component.
The Assistant Minister for Social Services, Senator Mitch Fifield, said that the Coalition does not propose any cuts to the Employee Assistance Fund.
“Social and economic participation by people with disability is integral to the inclusion of people with disability in society, a central tenet of the NDIS of which the Government has repeatedly stated its strong and unequivocal support,” said Senator Fifield.
Deaf Australia would like to thank DEEWR and Senator Fifield for promptly responding to the issues raised in our media release.
“In my discussions with the Department, I reinforced that the EAF program as a whole is important to Deaf people,” said Deaf Australia Acting President Mr Todd Wright, “Deaf people need access to Auslan interpreters as well as access to captioning and notetaking services, and workplace modifications including technology and equipment.”
The Department has also advised us that eventually the EAF will be moved under the Disability portfolio in the Department of Social Services, under the responsibility of Senator Mitch Fifield, Assistant Minister of Social Services.
However, we are still concerned about the Government’s decision to axe the Disability Ministry and are calling for this portfolio to be immediately reinstated.
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• Some Deaf Australia members were worried because they heard rumours that the EAF would change
• Deaf Australia wanted to find out what was going on, so we sent out a media release and have also been in contact with DEEWR
• DEEWR have told Deaf Australia that there are currently no changes planned for the EAF
• Deaf people can keep using the EAF as normal
• If Deaf people have any concerns about the EAF, please contact us

The day before the M-Enabling Conference, Phil Harper organised, and Australian Communication Exchange sponsored, a roundtable meeting of invited people to meet with Karen Peltz Strauss who was one of the keynote presenters at the conference. Here’s a summary of what was discussed.

Tony Abbott shocked the nation on Monday when he announced his new cabinet; eliminating key ministerial portfolios, including Disability, Women, and Mental Health. Deaf Australia has condemned the move, saying it will take Australia backwards.

“With this decision, Tony has already broken his promise made in his victory speech, saying there would be “no surprises, no excuses’,” said Deaf Australia Acting President Todd Wright today. “He has shown his true colours by further marginalising one of the most vulnerable minority groups in Australian society.”
“Cutting the Disability Ministry and Parliamentary Secretary for Disability role proves Abbott is out of touch with Australian people and wants to make sure we have no way to communicate our needs to the government,” said Mr Wright, “It is easy to ignore the needs of vulnerable people when there is no-one responsible for ensuring their wellbeing.”
This is the latest in a series of anti-disability decisions Abbott hoped would go unnoticed. Deaf Australia has been told that the Coalition’s last-minute policy costings, released the day before the election, appear to show plans to pay for election promises by axing 50% of the Employment Assistance Fund (EAF); an already pitifully small fund that covers vital interpreting, captioning and notetaking services, and workplace modifications for Deaf people in employment.
The EAF is an essential tool used by potential Deaf employees to gain access to job interviews, to secure a job, and to develop a meaningful career, by removing barriers in the workplace.
“If the EAF is cut, many Deaf people will be at risk of losing their jobs, as their employers will not be able to afford to pay for interpreters and other requirements that they need,” explained Mr Wright, “Forcing Deaf people back onto the dole is irresponsible and old-fashioned and will cost the government much more in the long run.”
Many Deaf employees find the current EAF funding level inadequate for their career development needs, so any cuts will be a huge step backward.
“Abbott is washing his hands from disability issues by removing critical ministry and parliamentary secretary roles in his cabinet,” explained Mr Wright, “He is out of touch with what the disability sector needs and will drag down long-term productivity gains in the workforce contradicting key Liberal policy.”
Deaf Australia is calling for the Abbott government to immediately reinstate the Disability Ministry and to clarify their commitment to the Employment Assistance Fund.

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• We used to have a Minister for Disability in the Australian government, but not anymore
• Disability is now part of the Minister of Social Services as are many other areas
• Deaf Australia is worried this means the Australian government will lose focus on our disability issues
• The Australian government may be cutting the EAF (Employment Assistance Fund) to save money, this is not confirmed yet
• Deaf Australia is worried this means Deaf people will not get support in their workplace like interpreters, captioning, notetaking
• We want the Australian government to tell us what will happen to the EAF program

The captioning Working Group met for the second time on 22 August to progress further the purposes of the group.

Anton Sammons was invited as an independent member to the Captioning Working Group. We still have one available position for an independent person; please contact Karen Lloyd at [email protected] for more information.

A brief update:

Cooperative Campaign:
Alex Varley from Media Access Australia provided an update on the captioning campaign which Media Access Australia is conducting. It will identify and target several programs and encourage the participants to lodge complaints on these selected programs. The industry believes the problem of poor captioning is not systemic and will not review the issues systemically, unless they receive several complaints about the same issue on the same program. Media Access Australia currently has nine willing participants. If you wish to participate in this campaign, please contact Chris Mikul at Media Access Australia at [email protected].
Digital Inclusion and Disability Forum: 
Kyle Miers, convenor of the Working Group gave a presentation to participants attending this forum organised by Infoxchange. His presentation focused on digital inclusion for deaf people.  It was well received by participants who represented the community sector, local and state governments and the information technology industry. Infoxchange asked Kyle to write an article about communication access and this was distributed to over 90,000 subscribers. You can read the article here. 

Captioning Principles:
One of the highlights of this meeting was the discussions about Captioning Principles. We agreed on ‘5 Stars Captioning’ principles which will provide us with a platform for best practice, best strategies and benchmarking so that captioning is of a high standard across all media/ video formats. The ‘5 Stars Captioning’ principles will also assist with campaign strategies. The group will continue polishing up the ‘5 Stars Captioning’ principles in the next few weeks.
Once the ‘5 Stars Captioning’ principles is finalised, we will work on a strategy for how to improve captioning across all areas of concern.  This which will be discussed at the next meeting, to be held in November.

DisabilityCare Australia, the national disability insurance scheme, will become a truly national scheme, with Western Australia signing up on 4 August 2013.

This agreement between the Commonwealth and Western Australian Governments means that a two year launch will commence from July 2014.
The Commonwealth and WA Government will jointly fund a DisabilityCare Australia launch site in the Perth Hills area, with around 4,300 participants.
This will be delivered by the DisabilityCare Australia Agency under national arrangements set out in the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) Act 2013.
The two Governments will also jointly fund two sites that will operate under the Western Australian My Way model, in the Lower South West and Cockburn-Kwinana, with around 4,080 participants.
These sites will be delivered by the Western Australia Disability Services Commission under State legislation.
Around 8400 West Australians with disability, their families and carers will benefit from the DisabilityCare Australia and MyWay sites in WA.
As with the other launch sites, there will be an independent evaluation of the services and outcomes in both sites during the launch period so that any positives and negatives can be shared and taken into account in the future delivery of services in Western Australia and full roll-out of DisabilityCare across Australia.

National Week of Deaf People (NWDP) is a weeklong celebration of Deaf people and the Australian Deaf community.

It is an opportunity for Deaf people to:

• Celebrate Deaf community, language, culture and history
• Make the public aware of their local, state and national Deaf communities
• Recognise their achievements

 
It is also an opportunity for organisations involved with the Deaf Community to:

• Showcase their services and/or products
• Build/maintain relationships with Deaf people
• Be recognised for giving Deaf people a fair go

This year, NWDP will be held from 19-25 October 2013

National Day of Deaf People (NDDP) will be on Sunday 20 October 2013.
The theme for this year is the same theme as the World Federation of the Deaf International Week of Deaf People for 2013:

“Equality for Deaf People”.

Be creative and start thinking about how you can celebrate Deaf culture!
The types of things you could organise for NWDP are:

• Deaf Festival Day/Expo
• Information pamphlets/posters
• Workshops/forums
• Deaf Comedy/Quiz/Theatre/Debate
• Film nights
• Open days

You will need to register your event with Deaf Australia to make sure it is a part of the official NWDP program. Registration also means your event will be listed on Deaf Australia’s website and will be promoted along with all the other official NWDP events, so people know what is happening all over Australia during that week.
To register, read the Terms of Reference on the Deaf Australia website, then fill out the registration form and send it with your flyer and any other promotional materials to your Deaf Australia state branch for them to collate and send to head office. ACT, NT and Tasmania can send their registrations direct to Deaf Australia.
You must register with your state branch by Friday 13 September 2013 in order for everything to arrive at Deaf Australia on time.
When promoting your event, there is some information you must include:

1. Title of event
2. Date/time
3. Venue
4. Organisation name
5. Contact person
6. Contact details (email, phone TTY, fax etc)
7. RSVP details (if needed)
8. Official NWDP logo

Remember you must include the Deaf Australia NWDP logo on all promotional materials, such as flyers, posters and DVDs etc. It is very important to use the logo so that that everyone will know your event is part of the official NWDP program.
If you are promoting your event verbally or using Auslan (eg on radio or TV), you need to be clear that NWDP is Deaf Australia’s national week for celebrating Deaf culture. For example, you could say: “As part of Deaf Australia’s NWDP, I have great pleasure in running this event…”.
Please download the registration information and start thinking about how you can get creative about celebrating Deaf people and culture during National Week of Deaf People!
 
[button url=”https://deafaustralia.org.au/wp-content/uploads/NWDP-collateral.zip” class=”button” size=”jumbo” color=”green-2″ target=”_self” lightbox_content=”” lightbox_description=””] Download all the NWDP documents (.zip 4.5MB) [/button] This file contains, the guidelines, registration form, NWDP logos (as PDF, EPS, JPEG and PNG files) and the logo usage guide.
[button url=”https://deafaustralia.org.au/wp-content/uploads/NWDP-Guidelines-2013.pdf” class=”button” size=”jumbo” color=”cool-blue” target=”_self” lightbox_content=”” lightbox_description=””] Download the NWDP guidelines only (PDF 444KB) [/button] [button url=”https://deafaustralia.org.au/wp-content/uploads/Event-Rego-for-NWDP-2013.doc” class=”button” size=”jumbo” color=”lime-green” target=”_self” lightbox_content=”” lightbox_description=””] Download the NWDP registration form only (.doc 256KB) [/button]  

Deaf Australia is always a hive of activity, busy with all sorts of tasks; working hard to make life better for Deaf people. Read more here about what we’ve been up to lately.

Date, Location, # participants

Tuesday 9 April 2013, Geelong Vic (Melissa Lowrie), 25
Wednesday 1 May 2013, Gosford NSW (with DSNSW), 30
Monday 6 May 2013, Burnie Tas, 14
Tuesday 7 May 2013, Hobart Tas, 15
Tuesday 7 May 2013, Launceston Tas, 14
Thursday 16 May 2013, Mackay Qld, 4
Friday 17 May 2013, Townsville Qld, 8
Saturday 18 May 2013, Mareeba Qld, 7
Saturday 18 May 2013, Cairns Qld , 16
Thursday 23 May 2013, Melbourne Vic, 5
Monday 27 May 2013, Sydney NSW, 4
Thursday 6 June 2013, Darwin NT, 5
Tuesday 11 June 2013, Bendigo Vic, 2
Wednesday 12 June 2013, Ballarat Vic, 6
Wednesday 19 June 2013, Perth WA, 50
Wednesday 19 June 2013, Perth WA, 25
Saturday 22 June 2013, Adelaide SA, 45
Thursday 27 June 2013, Brisbane, 65
Total number of participants, , 340
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Captioning Working Group
The Working Group will meet again on 22 August.
Cinema Captioning
Cathy Clark represented Deaf Australia at the ACAG meeting on 30th July.
Qld Civil and Administrative Tribunal Hearing on Deaf people and jury service
Our Office Administrator Gaye Lyons, in a personal capacity, filed a complaint against the Queensland Government for discrimination in refusing to allow her to do jury service. The case was heard at the Qld Civil and Administrative Tribunal on 4-6 June. Another staff member and I went along on 5 June to offer support to Gaye, and Gaye and I were then interviewed by Channel 10 TV news. It was on the news that night. The decision on the case has not yet been handed down.
Deaf Jurors research project
We agreed some time ago to be a partner to a research project (an extension of an earlier project led by Jemina Napier at Macquarie University) and the project is now going ahead. It will involve several universities but is led by University of Sydney. Our role is to have a representative on the reference group and help identify Deaf research participants. The first meeting will be in August.
Census
In May I sent a letter to the Deaf Society of NSW supporting their submission to change the Census question about language used at home.
Royal Commission into Child Sex Abuse
I met with one of the Commissioners and the Commission secretary on 3 July to discuss how best to ensure that Deaf people know about the Commission, can access it and tell their stories to the Commission. They were very open to information and suggestions and I expect to have more follow up discussions with them.
DETE Auslan Short Courses
Deaf Australia has had an agreement with the Queensland Department of Education, Training and Employment (DETE) to provide Auslan classes for Queensland School staff since January 2009. The provision of these classes had to go to tender again because there is a time limit on how long such an agreement can be. We submitted a tender offer and await the outcome. So all DETE Auslan Short Courses had to stop and there have been no classes since the end of June.
Disability Rights Research Collaboration Roundtable
The University of Sydney and People with Disabilities Australia are collaborating on a new initiative – the Disability Rights Research Collaboration As part of this project they will seek to build links with Disable People’s Organisations working to improve the recognition of rights for people with disability in Australia and the Asia Pacific.
They are hosting a roundtable on Political Participation, Inclusion and Decision Making on 9 August to explore how political participation and decision making for people with disability can be thought about in new ways. I will make a short presentation at the roundtable.
Captioning on free to air TV multichannels
The Department for Broadband Communications and the Digital Economy sent us a letter with two proposals for increasing captioning on free to air TV multichannels. We sent a letter rejecting both proposals, saying that we want 100% captioning between 6am and midnight on all multichannels within three years. (The main channels – ABC, SBS, 7,9,10 must have 100% captioning between 6am and midnight by June 2014).
ALRC inquiry into legal barriers for people with disabilities
The Australian Law Reform Commission (ALRC) is doing an Inquiry into Legal Barriers for People with Disabilities. It appears that they will consult with organisations like Deaf Australia and will also develop discussion papers for us to respond to. The inquiry was announced on 24 July. [/accordion] [accordion title=”Key Priority 4: Organisational stability and growth” active=”no”] Information Management
We have done an analysis of our members and stakeholders survey and will put the results on our blog.
Partnerships
State Branches:
Deaf Australia’s board and I and the Deaf Victoria board and Manager had a meeting, followed by dinner together when our board had a meeting in Melbourne on 25-26 May.
We have received a copy of a letter that SA Deaf community have sent to Australia Federation of Deaf Societies requesting help with preventing the sale of the 262 building and their problems with DeafCanDo. Deaf Australia’s board will discuss this at their meeting on 11 August.
Deaf Children Australia
Ann Darwin and I met with DCA on 24 May.
AFDO
I attended the AFDO members meeting in Sydney 28 and 29 May.
National forum for peaks
The Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs (FaHCSIA), which funds Deaf Australia and other peak disability organisations, has requested that AFDO organise a national forum for peak disability organisations. AFDO is continuing to work on trying to set up this forum and I attended a planning meeting by teleconference on 4 July. It has become apparent that FaHCSIA wants this forum to review how the disability peak sector and funding is structured in the future.
Everyone’s funding is under threat including ours.
One of the peak organisations has sent to the Minister a proposal to withdraw direct funding from a number of organisations, including Deaf Australia, and for Deaf people to be included in a cross disability organisation or an organisation for people with sensory disability.
The proposal is included for discussion at our next Board meeting, and I have been working on a document that sets out some thoughts for the review.
This forum will happen on 18 and 19 September.
I believe that Deaf people need representation from an organisation that specifically focuses on Deaf people, culture and issues, and being absorbed into a wider organisation would not be appropriate for the Deaf Community.
We all need to be fully aware of what is going on and ready to get involved with this process in a meaningful way, in order to have a strong presence and protect our members’ rights for the type of representation that best suits them now and into the future.
You can help us show that Deaf people need their own representative organisation by becoming a member of Deaf Australia and telling us what you need us to advocate for on your behalf and encouraging your friends and family to do the same.
AFDS
Deaf Australia’s board and I attended a meeting with some of the CEOs and board members of the Deaf Societies on 25 May. We discussed how we might better work together in positive ways.
WFD
Deaf Australia will host meetings of the new WFD Oceania Region in Sydney on Tuesday 15 October (afternoon) and Wednesday 16 October (morning), as well as the WFD Ordinary Members meeting in the afternoon on 16 October. Peter Davies has very kindly offered to help us with the arrangements for the meetings.
We will also share an information booth with the WFD at the WFD Conference and the International Deaf Festival in October in Sydney in October.
ASLIA
Ann Darwin and I met with Paul Heuston and Teresa Cumpston-Bird on 24 May. Ann Darwin and Paul Heuston signed a Memorandum of Agreement between Deaf Australia and ASLIA.
Capacity building
4Senses
The State Library of Queensland approached us and the 4Senses team and offered to host a special 4Senses event at the library, as the final event in an extended program they have had running for several months that is about Brisbane’s band culture. It will be a special 4Senses event on Friday night 15 November. Ticket numbers will be limited so be sure to buy your tickets early. [/accordion] [/accordion_set]

Election information in Auslan.

The federal election has now been announced for 7 September 2013 and all Australians have until 8pm on Monday 12 August to enrol to vote or update their enrolment details.
In preparation for the election, the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) has produced an AUSLAN guide to enrolling and voting.
This AUSLAN video guide is hosted on YouTube and provides easy instructions and information for people who use Auslan as their preferred language.
Don’t miss out on having your say! Watch the video and make sure you are enrolled by the due date.
For more information, visit the AEC website: www.aec.gov.au

Sydney-sider Mr Colin Allen, currently World Federation of the Deaf President, was elected to the position of Second Vice-Chair of the International Disability Alliance (IDA) Board in July this year, and will be part of the organisation’s work in promoting human rights internationally.

“We are proud to congratulate Mr Allen on this appointment,” said Deaf Australia President Ann Darwin, “He does excellent work in promoting Deaf rights with WFD and it is great to see an Australian Deaf person in another pivotal role on the world stage.”
The IDA, established in 1999, is a network of global and regional disabled people’s organisations (DPOs). It aims to promote the human rights of persons with disabilities as a united organisation of persons with disabilities utilising the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and other human rights instruments. The IDA participates as representatives of representative organisations of persons with disabilities at the national, regional and international levels.
The IDA, along with member organisations around the world, provides a voice to people living with a disability. There are many Disabled People’s Organisations worldwide, and although they represent over one billion people, they are the most frequently overlooked minority group.
The United Nations system both in New York and Geneva acknowledges the IDA’s unique composition as a network of the foremost international disability rights organisations and as the most authoritative representative voice of persons with disabilities.