In conjunction with Channel 7 the Deafness Council initiated the first live captioned news service in Australia and continue to campaign to increase closed captioning on the air and pay TV. Member John Byrne's actions to the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission led to captioned new release movies being shown in major city theatres throughout Australia.
Deafness Council campaigned to convince government to introduce newborn hearing screening and to encourage this to become universal in Western Australia. The Council, successfully campaigned to ensure appropriate services are provided to support parents of children identified with a hearing loss under this program.
The Council has actively lobbied the Federal Minister for Communications seeking to ensure that all emergency services announcements broadcast on television, are open captioned, in addition to being Auslan interpreted.
We are actively engaged in working with government to ensure that with the proposed changes to the NDIS, people who are Deaf or hard of hearing are provided with appropriate access to and supply of relevant support services.
