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.

[divider style=”hr-dotted”] [accordion_set] [accordion title=”Key Priority 1: Early intervention and education” active=”yes”] National Summit on Early Intervention & Education for Deaf & Hard of Hearing People, November 2012
Following the release of the summit report in May, I have met with two of the summit facilitators, Cathy Clark and Leonie Jackson to discuss next steps. We plan to set up a working group to lead the work on putting the report’s strategies into action, and we hope to have the first working group meeting in October in Sydney.
Early Intervention Working Group (Qld)
Attended a meeting of the working group on 18 June.
Australian Federation of Disability Organisations education policy
I provided feedback to AFDO on their education policy, 20 May.
Klemzig School
While in Adelaide for the NDIS forum, Gaye Lyons and I joined WFD President Colin Allen on a visit to Klemzig School on 21 June. Klemzig has a co-enrolment (hearing and deaf together in the same classrooms) bilingual education program. It was wonderful to see the children communicating and interacting with each other and with us so comfortably and confidently.
Adelaide TAFE
Also while in Adelaide, Colin, Gaye and I attended the graduation event for Deaf students and Auslan students. Colin presented the certificates to the Auslan students and I presented the certificates to the Deaf students, and we joined them all for supper and a chat afterwards. It was a lovely event and we were honoured to be asked to be involved.
Inquiry into the TAFE system
Cathy Clark and I gave evidence to a public hearing of the House of Representatives Committee Inquiry into TAFE, 7 June.
ANZCED Conference
I attended the ANZCED (Australian and NZ Conference of Educators of the Deaf) on 6 and 7 July in Brisbane.
Employment
At the last two meetings I attended with DEEWR, about the Disability Employment Services system, I and other advocates pointed out to DEEWR that they need to fund us to do this work. DEEWR has followed up and has offered $41,000 each to 15 disability organisations.
I have not yet received information on what the conditions of the funding are – I will attend a teleconference with DEEWR on 5 August.
AFDO has asked members to meet in Melbourne on 19 August to discuss possible joint projects using some of this funding that we each will get. I will attend that meeting. [/accordion] [accordion title=”Key Priority 2: Access to communications” active=”no”] Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman
The TIO held a meeting on 6 June to discuss their Disability Action Plan. Kyle Miers represented Deaf Australia at this meeting.
M-Enabling Conference
ACCAN is hosting a conference about mobile communications technology and people with disabilities on 14-15 August in Sydney. I will be attending.
Visit by Karen Pelz Strauss
An American expert on telecommunications for deaf people will be in Australia for the M-Enabling conference and ACE has organised a roundtable with her for invited people. Deaf Australia, Deafness Forum and AFDS will jointly host it. Kyle Miers and Todd Wright and I will attend the roundtable on 13 August. [/accordion] [accordion title=”Key Priority 3: Access to information and media” active=”no”] DisabilityCare Australia / National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS)
We held a series of general awareness raising workshops about the NDIS in various locations from April to June. I led all of these workshops except those held in Geelong and Gosford.
[table width=”550″ colwidth=”220|200|100″ colalign=”left”]

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
[/table]  
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]

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.

[divider style=”hr-dotted”] [accordion_set] [accordion title=”Key Priority 1: Early intervention and education” active=”yes”]

National Summit on Early Intervention & Education for Deaf & Hard of Hearing Children, Canberra, 29 & 30 November 2012

FaHCSIA has sent us feedback on the report from the summit and has requested some changes. We are now waiting for our colleagues at Grant Thornton to make changes. We continue to hope to be able to send the final report out soon.

Early Intervention Working Group

I attended a meeting of this group on 23 April. One of the things the group is discussing is the development of early intervention protocols, i.e. what elements a good early intervention program must have. In preparation for this we are looking at similar documents from overseas.
A member of the Working Group is working on mapping early intervention services in Queensland – i.e. documenting what services are available and in what locations. At a previous meeting she provided some information about this to the group. During April I sent her some feedback on the importance of ensuring that the availability or absence of Auslan/bilingual early intervention services is clearly included in the documentation along with speech and auditory therapy services.

Inquiry into the TAFE system

The House of Representatives Standing Committee on Education and Employment announced an inquiry into the TAFE system in March. TAFE plays a very important role in the education of people who are Deaf so it was important that we send in a submission. We sent out a request for feedback from the community and received a lot of very valuable information which we then used in our submission to the inquiry, sent on 18 April. Many thanks to those who sent us their comments, with special thanks to those people who agreed to have their stories included as case studies. At some point the Committee will make our submission available on its website and you will be able to read it by clicking here.

Employment

The Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR) held a ‘Consumer Day’ in Canberra on 30 April, which I attended along with representatives from other peak disability representative organisations.
In preparation for this I sent out a request for feedback from the community about their experiences and views of the new Disability Employment Services (DES) system. Many thanks to those who sent in feedback; it was very helpful.
At the meeting, DEEWR provided us with a lot of information about the new arrangements for DES and it became clear that a great deal of information that DES consumers should be getting is not actually reaching them. DEEWR agreed to provide information in a more simple and easy to understand format and we agreed to help them by making this information available to our members.
As an example of information that consumers generally do not seem to be aware of, DES providers are required to use their DEEWR funds to cover any support costs a client needs in the Employment Pathways (pre-employment) stage as well as the interview and employment stages. This means that if you are a Deaf person and you want to, for example:

1. do a training course relevant to your Employment Pathways plan but the training organisation is small or privately owned and won’t provide interpreters, or
2. do some work experience or volunteering

then the DES provider has enough funds to provide interpreting. It also means that if you go to a generalist (i.e. not Deaf specific) DES provider and you need an interpreter the DES provider does have enough funds to pay for a qualified interpreter for their meetings with you; it is not acceptable for them to say they don’t have the funds or for them to use unqualified interpreters or staff who ‘can sign’ but are not sufficiently fluent in Auslan for your needs.
This information is clearly set out in the Code of Practice and Service Guarantee that all DES providers have signed up to. You can ask your DES provider for a copy.
Several of us raised the issue of there now being fewer specialist DES providers. For Deaf people this means more Deaf people have to go to generalist (not Deaf specific) DES providers. DEEWR said that many specialist providers were very good at understanding the needs of their clients but were not successful enough at finding them jobs. They showed us some statistics from their database that showed that only about 20-30% of consumers who have received services from DES providers have been placed in jobs. This is a very low success rate.
Many people have said to us, and we have said many times to DEEWR, and said it again at the Consumer Day, that the $6,000 per person per year cap on interpreting from the Employment Assistance Fund (EAF) is not enough for some people. DEEWR seems to disagree, and they later sent me some information from their databases showing that the average amount spent on interpreting per EAF registered Auslan user (who is in a job) per year is $2,408. I need to talk more with DEEWR about this; averaging it out like this is not particularly the best approach as interpreting needs vary greatly between jobs and people. But it does seem to indicate that although we know the $6,000 cap is not enough for some people, it is more than enough for many. We need more research on this issue. [/accordion] [accordion title=”Key Priority 3: Access to information and media” active=”no”]

DisabilityCare Australia (NDIS)

In April we worked on the planning for a series of general awareness raising workshops about the NDIS in as many locations (including regional locations) as we can fit into the time available up to 30 June 2013. I will be out of the office a lot in May and June doing workshops in the community. These workshops are specifically for Deaf people and will be in Auslan. No interpreting will be provided – however, please let us know if you need a deafblind interpreter. Please keep an eye out for the information announcing locations and dates and check the Outlook blog entry.  And please come along to a workshop; the NDIS will bring big changes for Deaf people, and it is important that we are all prepared for these changes.

DDA Transport Standards

The Australian Federation of Disability Organisations (AFDO), of which Deaf Australia is a member, prepared a submission to the Review of the DDA Transport Standards. We sent comments about Deaf people’s needs to AFDO for inclusion in their submission. [/accordion] [accordion title=”Key Priority 4: Organisational stability and growth” active=”no”] Emeritus Professor Des Power AM, died on 3 April, aged 77. Des Power was well known around the world as an educator and academic in the field of Deaf Education. He was also a consistent ally of Deaf Australia and a long-time supporter of Deaf people and their aspirations for more access and opportunity. He will be greatly missed by many including those of us at Deaf Australia who knew him well. Deaf Australia life members Breda Carty and Robert Adam collaborated on a wonderful obituary for Des from the point of view of Deaf people who knew him. You can see this obituary by clicking here.

Partnerships:

Deaf people from NESB/CALD backgrounds

On 16 April I met with the CEO of AMPARO – a Queensland advocacy organisation for people with disabilities from NESB/CALD backgrounds. AMPARO wants to work with us on a special project for families of Deaf people to learn Auslan. We will be talking further with them and with NEDA, the national organisation for this group of people.

World Federation of the Deaf

In April the WFD asked us to recommend a number of interpreters to possibly interpret at a meeting of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disability committee in Geneva in September this year. This meeting will discuss Australia’s report on its compliance with the UNCRPD. Deaf Australia does not have the resources to do a full scale formal recruitment process of interpreters, and we are already familiar with interpreters working at this level so we approached suitable interpreters directly and sent information to WFD.
Board member Ida Rogers has continued to work on arrangements for youths and youth leaders to attend the WFD Junior Youth Camp in Rome in July this year. We will now have two youths attending – Max Eyking and Anabelle Beasley. They will be accompanied by a youth leader, Shirley Liu. [/accordion] [/accordion_set] [content_box style=”green” title=”About the contributor”] Karen Lloyd AM is Executive Officer of Deaf Australia. [/content_box]

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.

[divider style=”hr-dotted”] [accordion_set] [accordion title=”Key Priority 1: Early intervention and education” active=”yes”]

National Summit on Early Intervention & Education for Deaf & Hard of Hearing Children, Canberra, 29 & 30 November 2012

The report from the summit has been received from strategic planning company Grant Thornton and we have sent it to the Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs (FaHCSIA). Once FaHCSIA has approved it, we will make it available publicly, including sending it directly to everyone who registered for the summit. The next step will be to work out our action plan for putting the identified strategies into action.

Employment

On Monday 4 March, Bill Shorten, Minister for Workplace Relations, was on Q&A on ABC TV and was asked a question about the $6,000 per year cap on support that people can get from the Employment Assistance Fund. The question was asked by a Deaf person and was specifically about interpreting. She made the point that $6,000 per year does not go far. Mr Shorten said he would take it on board. On Tuesday 5 March I sent additional information about this issue to Mr Shorten, and further encouraged him to investigate possible improvements. [/accordion] [accordion title=”Key Priority 3: Access to information and media” active=”no”]

DisabilityCare Australia (NDIS)

On 18 March I had a discussion with a member of the NDIS Taskforce about the NDIS Rules and provided some feedback from a Deaf community perspective.
Late in February the Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs (FaHCSIA) offered us $8,000 to help us to consult with the Deaf community about the NDIS Rules and to conduct community engagement activities to raise awareness about the NDIS between now and 30 June 2013.
We started this work by developing a series of short videos about the NDIS Rules. In three days we managed to summarise many pages of information on seven sets of rules into one – two pages of key information about each set of rules, and film them in Auslan. The videos are on Youtube and on our blog deafaustralia.org.au
We also worked with our state branches and some of our board members to quickly organise and hold workshops about the rules and provide feedback to government by 22 March. We managed to hold workshops in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth and we sent a lot of excellent feedback to government. Our thanks to board members and state branches who worked quickly with us to make these workshops happen, to all the people who came along to the workshops at such short notice, and to those people who viewed the videos online and sent us feedback. Your input was very valuable and was sent to government.
We are now planning a series of general awareness raising workshops about the NDIS in as many locations, including regional locations, as we can fit into the time available up to 30 June 2013. Please keep an eye out for the flyers announcing locations and dates and check our blog at deafaustralia.org.au

Captioning Working Group

Captioning on various media has long been a major issue of concern for Deaf and hard of hearing people. Over the years, Deaf Australia has had a sub-committee of members interested in captioning issues, which achieved some progress on these issues, and captioning is currently included in our strategic plan’s Key Priorities.
Deaf Australia’s board has recognised that the issues require more collaboration with other relevant organisations and community groups in order to achieve further desired outcomes. So during March we worked on the preparations for setting up a Captioning Working Group and invited six other organisations and community groups to send a representative to this Working Group. Organisations/community groups invited are:

• Deaf Victoria
• Deafness Forum
• Action on Cinema Access (AOCA)
• Media Access Australia
• Arts Access Victoria
• ACCAN

We also sent out a call for expressions of interest in two independent individual community representatives.
The purpose of this Working Group is to bring together like-minded organisations and community groups to work co-operatively to:

1. Work as a unified front to address captioning issues across various media formats;
2. Undertake campaigns to promote increased access to captioned content suitable for Deaf and hard of hearing people in various media formats; and
3. Keep abreast of research and identify best practice for delivery of captioning.

Kyle Miers will convene the Working Group on Deaf Australia’s behalf and Deaf Australia will provide secretariat support as outlined in the Terms of Reference, which are available on our website www.deafau.org.au The Working Group will be based in Melbourne, for practical reasons, but will work in the interests of caption users Australia-wide. The first meeting of the Working Group will be held on Thursday 2 May 2013.

Accessible Cinema Advisory Group (ACAG)

Cathy Clark represented Deaf Australia at the ACAG meeting on 15 March. Information from this meeting will be available on our blog soon.

AHRC ‘20 years, 20 stories’

Following on from the launch of the ‘20 years, 20 stories’ DVD celebrating 20 years of the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) in February, state Anti-Discrimination Commissions have been holding state based celebrations. The Queensland celebration was held in Brisbane on 18th March and I was invited to join a panel discussing the impact the DDA has had in the past 20 years and what further changes are needed. You can see the videos on the AHRC website by clicking here [/accordion] [accordion title=”Key Priority 4: Organisational stability and growth” active=”no”]

Partnerships:

During March 2013 we worked with several other organisations – Macquarie University, Northern Melbourne Institute of Technology (NMIT), Heriot Watt University (Edinburgh), Deaf Society of NSW, Vicdeaf and ASLIA – to prepare a funding application for a project to develop standards for Auslan translations, which was sent to ACCAN. This is an update of a funding application we submitted to ACCAN last year. We hope that it will be successful this year. Special thanks to Della Goswell at Macquarie University and Cathy Clark at NMIT for their commitment to making sure this was done on time, including working on it over the Easter break.

World Federation of the Deaf

One of our board members, Ida Rogers has been working hard on the call for applications from youths and youth leaders to attend the WFD Junior Youth Camp in Rome in July this year. The lucky youths who will be going are Max Eyking and Anabelle Beasley, and the youth leader accompanying them is Shirley Liu.

AOCA

In March we were contacted by the community group Action on Cinema Access (AOCA) and were asked to clarify our current approach to cinema accessibility, in particular in relation to some specific issues. We were also advised that AOCA planned to withdraw from the ACAG at the meeting on 15 March.
In response I sent the following information to AOCA and I include it here in the interest of open and transparent information sharing:

1. Deaf Australia’s position has always been that open captioning is the preferred format. We have said this from the very start when cinema captioning was first investigated back in 1999/2000 when the first trial was held. (What we mean by ‘open captions’ is what some people in AOCA are now referring to as ‘on-screen captions’.)
2. We negotiated for years with the cinemas to try to increase/improve the number of venues, the number and variety of films available, session times, and resolve a number of other issues including lack of advertising and inaccurate advertising. All of this was in relation to open captioned films. Closed captioning was never discussed except once that I recall when a hearing person said that Rear Window would be better and we disagreed. The big 4 cinemas have always been extremely difficult to work with from the very start.
3. Since the roll out of Captiview (which was a deal made between government and the big 4, Deaf Australia was not involved in negotiating this deal) our position has always been based on the information available to us at the time we made public statements in our newsletters etc.
   • From the beginning, we said that we support the roll out, the increase in the number of venues was great, but that the captiview technology would not be suitable for everyone (and just so you know where I personally stand on this, I personally dislike Captiview and have done from the first time I saw it when it was launched; I believe this may also be true of both our current and previous representatives on ACAG; however in my job, and in their role as representatives, we must speak for the community as a whole, not just our own personal views). From the beginning we have also said that the cinemas must investigate new technology as it becomes available.
   • We have in the past been asked for our position on Captiview and we have published articles in our newsletters saying that based on the information available to us at that time we believed that Captiview was the best available technology currently or at that time. The “currently” and “at that time” caveat seems to be overlooked by those who misunderstand or misinterpret our position. We have also consistently said publicly that the cinemas must investigate new technology when it becomes available.
   • We have also pointed out problems with the current technology, staff training etc in cinemas. We have done this consistently on ACAG, and at an ACAG meeting last year your representative Cathy Clark offered to work with Veronica Pardo from AAV to identify a suitable training program that can be adapted for cinema staff. She showed me a program they had identified, one day last year when I was Melbourne, but I’m not sure where they are currently up to on this.
4. We agree that issues of technology not working, staff training, advertising etc are ongoing problems. They have always been problems even before Captiview and were issues that we were trying for years to get the cinemas to improve – see point 2 above.  We agree that these problems seem to be getting worse.
5. We understand that many people don’t like Captiview / it doesn’t suit them because of height, eye focus issues etc. We also understand that there are people who do like it. And we also understand that there are people who are prepared to put up with it in the absence of something better. It remains our view that open captions are the preferred option.
6. We have previously, in emails and face to face, told AOCA that we basically agree on what the problems are and that open captions are preferred. What we have not been able to agree on is the strategies for advocating for a better deal. AOCA seems to believe that a quick fix is possible and that if we complain enough and loudly enough it will get fixed. We understand that everyone wants this fixed ASAP – and so do we. I’d love to be able to tick this off my very long to-do list and move on to other issues that also need attention.However, based on all of our experience, a quick fix is unlikely to happen with the big 4 cinemas. Making a lot of noise publicly and constantly complaining isn’t necessarily going to bring a quick fix, in fact sometimes it does the opposite and causes the ‘enemy’ to dig in and stop listening. With advocacy some things do unfortunately take a long time and in advocacy we need to be able to cope with the constant frustration and disappointment. Just as comparisons, it took us 10 years to convince government to fund the National Relay Service (NRS) and 8 years to convince them to include SMS emergency call service and Video Relay Service in the NRS.  Funding to establish the National Auslan Booking and Payment Service (NABS) only took us 2 years. So you never can tell how long something is going to take but most things don’t happen quickly. We need the community to understand this better.
7. Deaf Australia has been in there advocating for cinema captioning and improvements since the late 1990s. We have always been and we remain committed for the long haul. The issues are a lot more complex than many people seem to understand. The advocacy we do is not always seen or understood by everyone, and we do need to do better at publicising what we do, but we have been there working on cinema access and we will remain there working on it.
8. The current problem is not ACAG itself. The problem is the big 4 cinemas. They are not, and never have been as committed as we want them to be, we have always had to drag them kicking and screaming to the next step. If AOCA withdraws from ACAG, that is, of course, their decision. However, we do not believe that it will lead the cinemas to improve their ways. Cathy Clark will be attending the meeting as Deaf Australia’s representative with the message that the cinemas need to lift their game, but we won’t be withdrawing from ACAG, we don’t believe this will result in any improvements, it will simply put us on the outside of the negotiation process.
9. For your information, we are also about to set up a working group of interested people to work with us on strategies for getting open captioning into independent cinemas. I need to do a few things first but I will be in contact with you and also Deafness Forum and others about this in due course. It would be great if we could harness some of the community enthusiasm and channel it into some fresh approaches to the issue, so we hope that AOCA will join us on this.

Following this, AOCA is still a member of the ACAG and will send a representative to the Captioning Working Group. We look forward to continuing to work with them in constructive ways on captioning issues. [/accordion] [/accordion_set] [content_box style=”green” title=”About the contributor”] Karen Lloyd AM is Executive Officer of Deaf Australia. [/content_box]

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.

[divider style=”hr-dotted”] [accordion_set] [accordion title=”Key Priority 1: Early intervention and education” active=”yes”]

National Summit on Early Intervention and Education for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Children, Canberra, 29 and 30 November 2012

The summit was a great success. We are now working with strategic planning company Grant Thornton on the report from the summit.

Early Intervention Working Group (Qld) and Qld Forum on Young Children with a Hearing Loss

I attended a meeting of the EIWG on 4 December 2012 and the QFYCHL on 26 February. Our involvement in these groups continues our work on building bridges with the early intervention industry and raising awareness of the importance of deaf children having access to both speech and Auslan from the time their deafness is identified.

Employment

Employment is not currently a key priority (because we don’t have the resources to do everything that needs doing) but when opportunities arise to advocate for employment, we do take them.
The Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, the Hon Bill Shorten MP, released a discussion paper about how to improve employment participation for people with disabilities. We set up a survey based on the questions asked in the paper and received some fantastic feedback from the community – thank you everyone. Based on this feedback, we sent in a submission paper on 15 February. The paper can be seen on our website www.deafau.org.au in the advocacy section.
Along with representatives from other peak disability organisations, I also attended a roundtable discussion with the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations on this topic on 21 February. [/accordion] [/accordion_set] [accordion_set] [accordion title=”Key Priority 2: Access to communications” active=”no”]

SMS emergency call service

We have been advocating for an SMS emergency call service for about eight years now and our efforts have finally succeeded. The Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy announced on 7 February that the new National Relay Service (NRS) contract will include an SMS emergency call service from 1 July 2013. We are delighted with this outcome, and we will be watching closely to see the service established.

Video Relay Service and Captioned telephony

We have also been advocating for many years for a Video Relay Service (VRS) and captioned telephony to be included in the NRS. The announcement on 7 February included that VRS and captioned telephony will be included from 1 July 2013. For information about the new and improved NRS go to Improved National Relay Service from 1 July 2013 (AUSLAN)

ACCAN Roundtable on accessible ICT procurement

I participated in a teleconference organised by ACCAN on 27 February to discuss a campaign and toolkit for lobbying governments to purchase accessible ICT (information and communication technology). This is an excellent idea and we congratulate ACCAN and the authors of the toolkit. Unfortunately our ability to participate in the campaign is very limited because we have no funding for communications related advocacy and we are already overloaded with work related to the funding we receive from FaHCSIA. However we will do our best to send out information about the campaign and to encourage everyone to get involved.

ACCAN Board

Australian Communications Consumer Action Network (ACCAN) announced on 1 November 2012, the results of the board election at their AGM, and there were no persons with a disability elected. I sent an email to ACCAN asking about this, but I have still not received a reply from anyone at ACCAN. However, we have recently received a general information email advising that Dean Barton Smith has been co-opted to the ACCAN board. We congratulate Dean on this appointment. However, it is of serious concern to us that only one person on the board is a person with a disability and is only been co-opted, not elected. ACCAN is supposed to be representing the communications needs of deaf people and people with disabilities generally, about 30% of their membership is from the disability sector, and they are the only body that government now funds to do communications advocacy work. There is a view that the ACCAN constitution should mandate that at least 30% of its board should be people with disability. [/accordion] [/accordion_set] [accordion_set] [accordion title=”Key Priority 3: Access to information and media” active=”no”]

NDIS

AFDO, in alliance with other organisations has been conducting an NDIS engagement project since mid-2012, but we have had little opportunity to be involved and we have not had any funding to organise community engagement meetings specifically for Deaf people. So we organised for AFDO to hold an NDIS workshop during our early intervention and education summit on 29 November 2012 in Canberra. Although it was not the best time to do this as people were tired after a long and intense day, it was an opportunity for Deaf people and family members to at least have some input while some of us were together in Canberra. Our thanks to Leah Hobson of AFDO for travelling to Canberra to do this workshop.
In August last year we sent in a submission for funding from the Practical Design Fund for funds for a project to raise Deaf community awareness and understanding of the NDIS. We included ASLIA in our submission. Other organisations in the deaf sector also sent in submissions for projects. Successful applicants were announced in November 2012 and not one deaf sector submission was approved. In December Deaf Australia sent a letter to the Minister, the Hon Jenny Macklin MP and the Parliamentary Secretary, Senator the Hon Jan McLucas on behalf of the sector. This letter was co-signed by eight other organisations in the Deaf sector plus AFDO, and we thank them for their collaboration and support. We have not yet received a response.
However, late in February received an offer of $8,000 funding from FaHCSIA to help us with our NDIS engagement work and this is very much appreciated; while it is only a little, it will help. The funding documents and requirements for how we can use it have not yet been received but we should be able to organise some community information and engagement activities about the NDIS very soon.
I met with FaHCSIA on 28 November 2012 to discuss the draft NDIS Legislation before it was released for public comment in December.
Our President Ann Darwin and I attended an AFDO members meeting on 14 January 2013, about the NDIS legislation. From this meeting AFDS prepared a submission to the Senate Inquiry on the legislation. We provided comments and further information on the draft submission.
We also sent a small submission of our own to the Senate inquiry on 25 January. Our submission said that we support the AFDO submission and highlighted issues of particular concern to deaf people. You can see our submission on our website www.deafau.org.au in the advocacy section.
It seems government is consulting on the name for the new NDIS and at the end of January I was interviewed by a market research company contracted by FaHCSIA about my views on various names for the NDIS.

ACMA TV captioning quality standard

Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) is developing TV captioning quality standards. The standards are required by last year’s changes to the Broadcasting Services Act and need to be developed by 30 June 2013. ACMA has consulted with Deaf Australia and other stakeholders at a number of meetings over the past few years. There have been two basic issues of disagreement between consumer representatives and industry representatives: we want numeric measures in the quality standards, i.e., 98% (or 95% or something similar) accuracy and no more than 5 seconds time lag in the captions but the industry does not want any numeric measures.
ACMA released a discussion paper and the draft standard in December 2012 and we were extremely disappointed with it.
We liaised with Media Access Australia (MAA) and ACCAN on our responses to the draft standard (Deafness Forum was also invited but was unable to attend the teleconference) and we sent a submission to ACMA on 21 January 2013. Deaf Victoria, all state Deaf Societies/Services, Arts Access Victoria and Deaf Children Australia all agreed to have their names on the first page as organisations supporting our submission. We thank them all for their support.
Our submission also covered other issues not in the draft standard:

• How complaints to ACMA about captioning will be managed effectively. ACMA tends to take a long time to investigate complaints and we are concerned about this.
• How standards will be communicated to the community, stressing that they need to be communicated also in Auslan.

You can see our submission on our website www.deafau.org.au in the advocacy section.

Cinema Captioning

ACAG (Accessible Cinema Advisory Group) will next meet on 15 March 2013.
Deaf Australia continues to work with ACAG to try to improve the situation for deaf people’s access to movies screened by the ‘big 4’ cinemas. However, we are concerned about the lack of progress in resolving many of the issues such as the poor service patrons are receiving from cinema staff and problems with the Captiview units not working. We are also exploring other strategies to get open captioning in cinemas, outside the ACAG process, such as working with the independent cinemas.

AHRC ’20 years, 20 stories’

The Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) is now 20 years old, and to celebrate this, the Australian Human Rights Commission has made a series of 20 videos telling the stories of 20 people who have used the DDA to fight for their rights. The Governor General led a celebration of this and launched the videos at a function at Admiralty House in Sydney on 1 March. Disability Discrimination Commissioner Graeme Innes, Minister for Disability Reform the Hon Jenny Macklin and Queensland Anti-Discrimination Commissioner Kevin Cocks all made presentations at the event. It was wonderful to catch up with so many fellow disability advocates and to remember the achievements over the years. Of course there is still a great deal to do, but we have made some progress. You can see the videos on the AHRC website at http://www.humanrights.gov.au/twentystories/videos.html#works-for-me [/accordion] [/accordion_set] [accordion_set] [accordion title=”Key Priority 4: Organisational stability and growth” active=”no”] The board met on 2 and 3 February in Brisbane. This was the first meeting for new board members Rachel Miers and Ida Rogers, and our President Ann Darwin gave them a warm welcome to the board. The first day of the meeting was devoted to governance training and action planning, led by past board member Kyle Miers and current board member Todd Wright.

National Disability Awards

Ann Darwin and I attended the National Disability Awards dinner in Canberra on 28 November 2012. Many deserving people won awards and we congratulate them all. We were especially excited to see The Captioning Studio and Australian Communication Exchange jointly win the award for Excellence in Improving Social Participation, and Michael Small jointly win with Samantha Jenkinson the Minister’s Award for Excellence in Disability Reform. Deaf Australia has a long history or working with ACE and also with Michael Small in his previous role at the Australian Human Rights Commission. Our congratulations to them.

4Senses

The second 4Senses event was held on 9 February. At the first event the organisers learnt a lot about how to make it really accessible for deaf people and they put this experience into practice the second time around, resulting in an even better event this time. Numbers of hearing people attending were higher but there were less deaf people than at the first event. The volunteer organisers are very enthusiastic and committed to the 4Senses concept, but it is a huge amount of work for them so they will only continue to hold it if lots of deaf people attend. They hope to hold another 4Senses in mid-2013 so we will need to promote it widely and encourage everyone to come along and bring their friends.

Newsletters

We are starting 2013 with a new format for our newsletters – a blog. We hope that this will help make our information easier for you to access and more widely available, and easier for us to keep you up to date more quickly. In combination with the new blog we will send out monthly summaries. We would welcome your feedback on this new format.
Deaf Australia still has a small number of members who do not have Internet access or for some other reason still need to receive paper copies of the newsletter. For these people we will continue to send information in paper format.

Partnerships:

States branches

The annual meeting of Deaf Australia’s board and state branch representatives was held in Canberra on 1 December 2012. We were very lucky to have WFD President Colin Allen lead a workshop on leadership and partnerships. Deaf Australia board member Todd Wright then led a workshop on governance. We hope these workshops will assist the states with their work.
Three QAD board members joined the Deaf Australia board for the board training day 2 February, focusing on governance and action planning. We hope to be able to do more training involving states to provide more support to them.

World Federation of the Deaf

WFD President Colin Allen made an engaging presentation at Deaf Australia’s AGM on 30 November 2012 and led a training workshop for our board and states on 1 December. We thank Colin for making time in his busy international schedule to be with us in Canberra and share his wide knowledge and experience.
The WFD Board has asked Deaf Australia to host a workshop for WFD Ordinary Members in Sydney on 16 October 2013, the afternoon before the WFD Conference begins. We have found a fabulous venue, a heritage room at the State Library of NSW and look forward to welcoming WFD and its delegates there.
In our November newsletter we included information about and a call for expressions of interest to attend the WFD junior camp in Rome this year but received none. Applications for the camp have now closed, but there may be a chance we can still send some so if you are interested please send your expression of interest to me urgently at [mailto][email protected][/mailto]

Australian Federation of Disability Organisations (AFDO)

AFDO has been through a review by consultants appointed by FaHCSIA. I was interviewed as part of the review on 15 November 2012. The report of the review has now been received and Deaf Australia joined other AFDO members at two days of strategic planning for AFDO on 28 February and 1 March.
AFDO, in partnership with People with Disabilities Australia and others wrote the Australian Shadow report on Australia’s compliance with the UNCRPD (we had some input into it way back). To assist the group, I obtained quotes from three different organisations for the cost of translating the summary into Auslan. We hope the translation will be available soon.

Australian Federation of Deaf Societies (AFDS)

Our President Ann Darwin and I met with AFDS representatives in Canberra on 29 November 2012 and in Melbourne on 15 January 2013. We hope to organise a half day workshop for Deaf Australia and AFDS representatives to revisit roles and try to resolve long standing issues in a new and positive way.

Deafness Forum

Board members met with DF board members over breakfast in Canberra on 30 November 2012.

ASLIA

Ann Darwin and I met with ASLIA President Paul Heuston and Secretary Teresa Cumpston-Bird on 14 January and discussed a number of issues of mutual interest to Deaf Australia and ASLIA. We are currently working on developing a Memorandum of Understanding.

Deaf Children Australia

We met with DCA in November 2012 and January 2013 and discussed a number of issues, including preparations for the coming NDIS.
DCA’s SignUp Employment Service has won a contract to provide an employment service for deaf people in Brisbane. Deaf Australia has agreed to provide some office space for SignUp and they will be based in our office from 4 March. Two other DCA staff who work on DCA children’s and family programs will also be based at our Stafford office with the SignUp team. We welcome the DCA team to our office.

Vicdeaf

Vicdeaf has very generously offered to organise some WFD Youth Section activities in Melbourne while everyone is in Australia for the WFD Conference in October this year. Deaf Australia and Deaf Victoria will jointly host these activities with Vicdeaf’s support. A big thank you to Vicdeaf for their generosity. [/accordion] [/accordion_set] [content_box style=”green” title=”About the contributor”] Karen Lloyd AM is Executive Officer of Deaf Australia. [/content_box]