Hello, I am Todd Wright, Chairperson of Deaf Australia.

I wish to express on behalf of Deaf Australia our  appreciation and gratitude to the members of the Deaf Community who have  actively worked hard to increase awareness about emergency announcements not  being fully accessible, especially for the government to be mindful that they  need to provide accessible information.

Thank you for your support, and specifically the Auslan  Access Media group led by Shirley Liu and other members, who took the  initiative of establishing this campaign.

Deaf Australia has relied on volunteers in the past to help  us achieve our objectives and we certainly hope that there will be more  volunteers who will rally and work collaboratively to make positive change for  our community.

Without volunteers, achieving our goals becomes harder.

We wish to acknowledge and express gratitude for those who  have worked hard in a positive way. There is always some risk with our  community expressing anger in the wrong way – which can cause negative impact  to the campaign. When this happens, governments and other stakeholders will focus  on the negativity only and will ignore this as they do not want to deal with  negativity.

It is important to remain positive and empower people to  advocate in the right way.

Collecting examples of when there is no interpreter shown on  screen during emergency announcements are a perfect way to positively demonstrate  why the issue must be addressed and why the current system is failing us. When  we have sufficient evidence, we can initiate positive dialogue with the  government and broadcasters to ensure that access to information can be  achieved.

We must include not only television, but also the internet  in our dialogue.

In the future, television will phase out, and the internet  will play an important role in our access to information. Television is  regulated through legislation (Broadcasting Services Act) which requires  broadcasters to make contents accessible, while internet have fewer protections  and legislation for accessible information which makes it harder to establish  standards.

Deaf Australia will keep monitoring the internet as our key  point in accessible information in the near future.

When establishing campaign groups, it is important that the  groups are established in an efficient and effective way. Sometimes, campaigns  require to consider what our long term goals are when we achieve a positive  response which does not fully meet our expectations. This will allow us to  continue with negotiations and compromising for short term improvements in  accessibility and working to eventually fulfil our goals, which takes time.  

I remember when I was involved in lobbying for more access  to open-captioned cinemas. We lobbied long and hard for this and at the end we  were provided with a solution using Capti-view which did not meet the  expectations for many deaf people. In hindsight, perhaps the deaf community should  have accepted the initial offer for some open captioned cinemas to be  established.

Upon reflecting past experiences, it is always good to  remember to focus on positive outcomes, and to continue negotiating for better  opportunities. We cannot assume or expect that they will give what we expect  straight-away. We need to be resilient and keep reminding them, and never give  up.

As a group, we can make a change. As an individual, it is  hard to make a change.

It is important that we all work together to achieve our  access, our objectives by collaborating and supporting each other.

We really appreciate your support. Thank you.

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