Deaf Australia wishes to say thank you for helping to flatten the Covid-19 in the last few weeks. We are looking forward to easing the restrictions as there are fewer Covid-19 cases that are emerging.

We wish to remind you that there is potential ‘2^nd wave’ of Covid-19 and for all of us to maintain our social distance until vaccination become available. Recent work into vaccination are promising and they need to go through steps to ensure that the vaccination is safe for people.

Deaf Australia encourage members of the Deaf community to download ‘COVIDSafe’ App that will help tracking other people or to yourself should you get in touch with someone who have COVID.

It is also important that having the App does not mean you are safe; it means it offers you and the community with extra precautions to stem down the Covid-19 and to assist Health officers to quickly contact the others to control the Covid-19.

Some people are worried about privacy. It is important to know that the App only have your name, your age range and post code. Government do not have other details. All activities are stored in your phone and is stored for 21 days. After 21^st day, your activities will be deleted.

If and when you have Covid-19, the health official will ask you to upload your information from COVID-19. They will use this information to track your contacts in the 21 days to make to minimise the spread.

We need your help to flatten the Covid-19. To download the App, you can go to App Store for Android and Apple. It is free.

For more information about COVIDSafe, please visit this website: https://www.health.gov.au/resources/apps-and-tools/covidsafe-app 

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.

Please see this video with some answers to common questions about the 6th WFDYS Junior Camp, Victoria, Australia, 11 – 17 April 2017.
Please note: The deadline for registration is on 11 November 2016. 

Deaf Australia Board would like to announce few important messages to our members and the deaf/ hard of hearing community.

As many of you are aware, the Department of Social Services (DSS) – A Department of Commonwealth Government – has defunded Deaf Australia in favour of supporting five cross-disability organisations.
This means that Deaf Australia’s funding will end on 30 June 2015 and will not be renewed by the Government. From 1 July 2015, Deaf Australia will be run entirely by volunteers.
Over the last 6 months, Deaf Australia has been focusing on a number of key areas to ensure the existence and sustainability of Deaf Australia. These are:

• Closure of Head Office: Deaf Australia’s head office in Brisbane has closed and resources have been relocated to Melbourne. Our new postal address can be found on the Deaf Australia website.
• The Auslan Shop: Our brand new Auslan Shop website remains open and is available for online purchases. The Auslan Shop now accepts payments through PayPal to make it easier for us to process the orders and for you to get your products faster. Some popular products can be viewed in person before buying, if required, at certain locations around Australia. Please check out auslanshop.deafaustralia.org.au for more information.
• Membership Renewal/ New Members: Current Deaf Australia memberships are now due for renewal. Please note there have been some important changes in the membership structure – joining / renewal fee is now $100.00 for deaf/hard of hearing and hearing people.
  • Deaf/ hard of hearing: $100.00 one off life-time membership
  • Hearing: $100.00 – every 5 years
  • Corporate: $250.00 every year 

For more information about Membership fees and renewals, please visit www.deafaustralia.org.au/membership.

• Deaf Friendly: This program is an initiative of Deaf Australia, intended to create an inclusive society for deaf people by linking the deaf community to businesses and organisations that have deaf / hard of hearing staff or hearing staff with good Auslan skills.

If you are a member of Deaf Australia, it is FREE to register to access the Deaf Friendly scheme. To get Deaf Friendly status, please go to www.deaf-friendly.com and complete your registration (the one registration form and payment covers both Deaf Friendly AND your membership to Deaf Australia).

• World Federation of the Deaf: Todd Wright and Kyle Miers will attend the WFD Congress in Istanbul Turkey at end of July 2015. Deaf Australia will present the Deaf Friendly initiative to members of the World Federation of the Deaf and propose a new international symbol of sign language. 

• Deaf Youth Australia: Deaf Youth Australia is recognised as an ordinary member of World Federation of the Deaf Youth Sector and will be sending two youth delegates: Shirley Liu and Olwyne Ho.

• Jeenee Mobile: Deaf Australia entered into a partnership with Jeenee Mobile to offer data/text only mobile plans for deaf people. Jeenee Mobile also have other plans that may be suitable for deaf/ head of hearing people, eg, voice/data/ and text plan. Deaf Australia received donations for Jeenee Mobile for every person who signs up to a plan using the copdeword. Please quote codeword ‘DeafAu’ when applying: jeeneemobile.org.au

Advocacy activities:

Please note that from 30 June 2015, many of the advocacy activities will be limited to the capacity of a volunteer organisation. If you have any concerns or issues, you should email us at [email protected] and Deaf Australia will redirect your inquiry to the relevant organisation(s) and keep a record of your matter. We will still advocate for deaf and hard of hearing people as much as possible.
Australian Curriculum and Reporting Authority (ACARA): Kyle Miers and Dr Breda Carty represented Deaf Australia at ACARA’s scoping workshop that is responsible for the development of the Auslan curriculum for primary and secondary schools. ACARA expects to complete the curriculum by December 2016.
Deaf People Serving on Juries: There are several developments in this area.

1. Court of Appeal in Queensland – Gaye Lyons has appealed against the tribunal case in Queensland on 20 May 2015. It is expected that the judges will determine the outcome within 3 months of the date. Deaf Australia attended the appeal. We will give an update when the case is decided.
2. Deaf Jurors Project – the University of New South Wales will be presenting their findings on 15 July 2015. Their preliminary findings have indicated that deaf people are capable of serving as jurors.
3. Victorian Disability Advisory Council (VDAC) – the Deaf Jury issue is on the agenda and is awaiting the outcome of the Deaf Jurors Project and Queensland Court of Appeal decision.

Disability Employment Framework: There is a current consultation in the community about the Disability Employment Framework. Deaf Australia has conducted a review on Disability Employment Services last year and will be reinforcing the issue of communication access and skilled knowledge of deafness for deaf job seekers and disability employment service providers.
Australasian Railway Association (ARA): The Australian Human Rights Commission has sought our opinion on ARA’s request for exemption of discrimination. Deaf Australia will be responding with this advice. Deaf Australia does not support the exemption.
Commercial Divers License: Deaf Australia has been approached by an organisation that wish to work alongside Deaf Australia to campaign Governments (both state and federal Governments) to remove discrimination for deaf people from acquiring (or being forced to accept restrictions on) commercial drivers licenses (truck drivers, taxi, or other paid positions). We received a favourable response from the Australian Human Rights Commission and several ministers (state organisations) who agreed with our position.
Deaf Australia would like to acknowledge Deaf Victoria’s submission (2014), which was used to strengthen our position for discrimination.
Australian Electoral Commission’s Disability Advisory Group: Deaf Australia has been involved with the Australian Electoral Commission over the years. We have agreed that communication guidelines will be developed to support delivering information to all consumers more effectively after identifying that each of the state/ territory and commonwealth agencies have different (and inconsistent) approaches to inclusive information. Deaf Australia will lead this development.
ABC News: Deaf Australia provided some comments to journalists regarding the CaptiView system and explained our belief that there is more work that needs to be done to ensure deaf patrons are happy with their cinema experience. For more about this article, please view here: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-06-02/deaf-people-critical-of-movie-captioning-service/6512914.
Early Intervention: Deaf Australia is close to finalising the position statement: ‘Requirements on Early Intervention for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Children in Australia’. This document is developed in collaboration with various stakeholders including: The Shepard Centre, Parents of Deaf Children, Aussie Deaf Kids, Deaf Children Australia, Royal Institute of Deaf and Blind Children, National Association of Australian Teachers of the Deaf, community members, and parents of deaf children.

Congratulations:  

• Carla Anderson (AM) (Vic) – Received the Australian Honours Award during the Queen’s Birthday for her significant contribution to the deaf-blind community through advocacy, support and service delivery roles.

• Jonathon Powyer (NSW) – Received High Achieving Referee with a Difference Award in NSW Touch Football Association Referees Awards.

Greetings from Chief Executive’s Desk.

In the last few months, we have been working hard to ensure that Deaf Australia is sustainable, to ensure that your views are appropriately represented. You may be aware that the government has changed the way that peak organisations are funded. Our current funding will cease at the end of December 2014 after so many years of the peak-funded program.
Deaf Australia has put in several funding applications seeking for funding for program initiatives and projects. These funding programs look favourably on organisations being part of a consortium as well as national peak organisations. We will know the outcomes of these submissions later this year.
The head office of Deaf Australia is currently based in Queensland and will continue to be based there until further notice.
Some of the activities we have done in the last few months are:

• Launched our brand new website
• Redirecting internet users from the old website www.deafau.org.au to the new website www.deafaustralia.org.au
• Improved communication distribution; linking Blog, FaceBook and Twitter
• Conducted Members and Stakeholder Satisfaction Survey
• Undertook consultations on NAPLAN, Disability Employment Services and National Disability Strategy
• Sent out several media releases
• Submitted and published an article on Emergency Announcement and use of interpreters
• Reviewed Deaf Australia’s Strategic Plan 2015-2020.

Membership Renewal:

Deaf Australia has developed a new way for you to renew your membership or become a new member. This system will ensure your information is up to date and current allowing state organisations to view their members quickly. If you have not renewed your membership for 2014-15, it is a good time for you to renew your membership now. Renew your membership here. www.deafaustralia.org.au/membership.

National Week of Deaf People (NWPD):

NWPD will take place between 18 and 24 October and the theme is Strengthening Human Diversity. Please check out www.deafaustralia.org.au/NWPD to find out how you can participate or register the events for NWPD.

Awards:

We will be announcing Deaf Australian of the Year, Deaf Youth Australian of the Year and Fair – Go Awards during the week. Please take this opportunity to nominate deaf adult, deaf youth and organisations worthy of recognition. Please nominate from this website: https://deafaustralia.org.au/information/awards/

AGM/ Special General Meeting:

Deaf Australia will be having our 28^th Annual General Meeting and Special General Meeting on Saturday 22 November 2014 in Perth.

Constitution Review:

The board believes that the constitution needs reviewing so that Deaf Australia are meeting the current needs and views of deaf people. There are three areas we will be covering:

• Membership fees and structure
• Inclusion of ‘hard of hearing’
• Board and governance.

Members will be asked to complete a survey through survey monkey (https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/2014_Constitution_Review). The closing date for feedback is 12 September 2014.
Members will have opportunity to comment on the draft Amendments (due 26 September 2014) before the final Amendments on 17 October 2014. A Special General Meeting will be held on 22 November.
It is important that you have your say in the review.

Deaf Youth Australia:

Deaf Australia is very pleased to announce that Deaf Youth Australia (DYA) is formally a part of Deaf Australia. DYA is applying to the World Federation of the Deaf – Youth Sector to be an official Deaf Youth designate of Australia as a Youth Ordinary Member. This will enable DYA to represent Australian Deaf Youth at the international level.

Dot Shaw Writing Competition:

Deaf Australia will be calling deaf children and youth to submit their writings as part of Dot Shaw Writing Competition. Winners will be announced at the Annual General Meeting. To register and submit writing competition, please check www.deafaustralia.org.au/dot_shaw_competition_2014.

World Federation of the Deaf:

Turkish National Federation of the Deaf is hosting the XVII World Congress in Istanbul Turkey from 28 July – 2 August 2015. The organising committee is calling for abstract submissions. Closing date for submissions is on 30 September 2014.
Early bird registration due is on 15 February 2015. Regular registration is due 15 May 2015. Late registration is after 15 May 2014.
For more details about the XVII World Congress, please go to this website: http://www.wfdcongress2015.org

Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse:

Deaf Australia has last year negotiated with the Commission to create accessible forum for deaf people to respond to child sexual abuse. Deaf Society of NSW has organised information session to enable deaf, deafblind and hard of hearing and their families as well as organisations all over Australia to understand its very important work. This information session was filmed: please check this link. http://stagingconnections.org/webcasts/royal_commission_2014/.
If you wish to contact the Commission to share your story, you will be able to do so in privacy by phoning them at 1800 099 340 or email at [email protected]. Please ask for an interpreter.
Deaf Australia is going through interesting and challenging times ahead this year. It is important that your views are represented to ensure that deaf people are not left behind.

The deaf community is outraged by today’s Queensland Supreme Court ruling that deaf people are to be banned from sitting on a jury for criminal cases.

A recent ruling by Justice James Douglas has decided that deaf people are ineligible for jury service as Queensland currently has no legislation to cover interpreters in a jury room during deliberations.

Read the reaction from Deaf Australia.

Read outgoing Executive Officer, Karen Lloyd’s final activity report for the months of January and February 2014.

We wish Karen all the best as she enters retirement.

Christmas is almost upon us. It has been an amazing year and next year will bring many changes.

Thank you very much to all our members, supporters and friends for their support throughout 2013, it’s been great to work with you. We wish you all a safe and happy holiday season and we look forward to working with you again in 2014.

Read more about what we’ve been up to during November and December.

Congratulations to the winners of the Deaf Australian of the Year 2013 Awards! As always, it is great to get nomination forms detailing the wonderful things Deaf people and organisations are doing in our community. Read more about this year’s recipients.

September was a quiet month as several of us, including our President Ann Darwin, were overseas on leave. Nevertheless we managed to achieve a great deal over the past three months.

Karen (left) with Phillipa Sandholm from the World Federation of the Deaf

Karen with Markku Jokinen, immediate past president of the WFD

• Work with industry – get industry on-side and then approach government and regulators together with an agreed position.
• Identify clear campaign positions and then bring in other organisations to support your position.
• Cinema captioning: the USA has the same problems we have. The basic problem is that the industry does not want open captions. She believes that the issue will only ultimately be solved with legislation/regulation.

[/accordion]
[accordion title=”Key Priority 3: Access to information and media” active=”no”] Roundtable: Political Participation, Inclusion and Decision Making
I attended this roundtable at the University of Sydney on 9 August. It was organised by the Disability Rights Research Collaboration, which is a project of the University of Sydney and People with Disability Australia. The roundtable looked at how we could take new approaches to political participation, inclusion and decision making, particularly in relation to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD). I was asked to attend the roundtable and talk about the relevance of particular UNCRPD articles in relation to deaf people. It was a very interesting day involving a mixture of disability advocates and academics.
The roundtable brought out some key themes, and we agreed that we would like to see things move forward by developing a national position statement that national Disabled Persons Organisations and researchers could endorse/sign up to/use in their work. The Disability Rights Research Collaboration team is working on developing this position statement.
Captioning Working Group
The Working Group met on 22 August and issued a communique in September. Working party communiques are on our blog here.
Cinema Captioning
Cathy Clark has been working quietly to build a cordial relationship with industry representatives from the Big 4 cinemas outside of the ACAG framework and is having some success. She met with a representative from the Big 4 and arranged for them to liaise with the Deaf Cinema Club (winner of the Roma Wood Captioning Award 2013) with the view to perhaps having some open captioned movie screenings, initially in Melbourne. This is a massive step forward but there is still a lot of work to be done. [/accordion]
[accordion title=”Key Priority 4: Organisational stability and growth” active=”no”]
Partnerships
State Branches
We had an information booth at the Queensland Deaf Festival organised by QAD and the P&C committee at Toowong State School on 26 October.
ACCAN – EAGER Research project on developing standards for Auslan translations
We are a partner with several other organisations – Macquarie University, Northern Melbourne Institute of Technology (NMIT), Heriot Watt University (Edinburgh, Scotland), Deaf Society of NSW, Vicdeaf and ASLIA – in a project to develop standards for Auslan translations, which has received funding from ACCAN. The project steering committee meets once per month on Skype. The first meeting was held on 1 August.
National forum on ‘Future Relationships’
Late last year, a consultant did a review of Australian Federation of Disability Organisations (AFDO), and the resulting report included a number of recommendations. One of these recommendations was that AFDO hold a national forum of organisations representing people with disability (both funded and unfunded) to discuss the best ways to structure representative organisations relationships to ensure that the interests of all disability groups are represented to government.
Some preliminary work on organising a forum occurred earlier this year and gained momentum from July. I attended a teleconference discussion with one of the forum consultants on 26 August in which we discussed a ‘conversation starter’ document that he had produced. I also wrote a document setting out my thoughts on the issues that the forum would be discussing and sent this to all people on the discussion list.
As I was on leave during September, Todd Wright and Kyle Miers represented Deaf Australia at the forum held in Canberra on 18 and 19 September. We have since received the report from the forum.
A working group has been set up to develop a preferred relationships model and Kyle Miers is representing Deaf Australia on this working group. Kyle liaises closely with me on matters the working group is discussing at each meeting. We expect to receive a document very soon that sets out a draft model for discussion with our members. Time for consultations with our members will be very short so please keep an eye out for information from us very soon. The working group is required to send a proposal for a preferred model to the Department of Social Services (previously FaHCSIA) by Christmas.
AFDS
I met with Chris Mathieson (Vicdeaf) and Brett Casey (Deaf Services Queensland) in Sydney on 13 August to discuss follow up actions from the 25 May Deaf Australia/AFDS workshop. We agreed on the outline for a ‘partnering framework’ for how we could work towards arriving at a Memorandum of Understanding between our two organisations and Chris offered to do more work on it and come back to us with a fleshed out document.
Deaf Society of NSW
Several Deaf Australia board and staff, including myself, attended the International Deaf Festival in Sydney on 19 October. We also attended the afternoon tea at Sydney Town Hall to celebrate the centenary of the Deaf Society of NSW on 20 October. During the afternoon the Deaf Society launched a fabulous new history website. Congratulations DSNSW on reaching 100 years and on a fantastic new resource!
World Federation of the Deaf
Deaf Australia board members and staff were at the 2nd WFD International Conference in Sydney on 17 and 18 October.
Prior to the conference, we hosted three events:

• A Board meeting of the new WFD Regional Secretariat – Oceania on Tuesday 15 October
• The first General Assembly of the WFD Regional Secretariat – Oceania on Wednesday morning 16 October
• A workshop for representatives of WFD Ordinary Members at the State Library of NSW Mitchell Library in the afternoon on 16 October.

All events were a great success and people especially loved the historic State Library venue for the OM workshop. A big thank you to Peter Davies and Danni Wright for looking after the venue and catering arrangements for these meetings.
Capacity building
New Website
We are working on developing a new website and it’s looking beautiful, very clean and crisp. We expect it to go live early in 2014.
4Senses
Since July, meetings have been held approximately each fortnight involving the 4Senses team, our staff and the State Library of Queensland staff, to prepare for the 4Senses event on Friday night 15 November at the State Library of Queensland. All is set for another fabulous and unique music event. [/accordion] [/accordion_set]
[content_box style=”green-2″ title=”Notice”] Earlier this year, we were notified by the 2012 Deaf Australian Youth of the Year Award Winner, Michelle Curtis (Goodison) of Adelaide that there were some errors in the award nomination information about her, and for that reason she did not wish to accept the award. It was Deaf Australia’s view that the errors were minor and had no impact on Michelle being a deserving recipient of the award. However, Michelle advised that she still did not wish to accept it. Deaf Australia accepts and respects her decision. [/content_box]