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Report on the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission Roundtable on DVD access

The first Roundtable meeting on DVD access took place in Sydney on 19 February 2007 . It was attended by the Australian Visual Software Distributors Association (AVSDA) and a number of its members, representatives from a number of disability community organisations, Federal Government Departments and Media Access Australia .

Opening remarks from Commissioner Innes

The meeting was chaired by the Human Rights Commissioner and Commissioner responsible for Disability Discrimination, Mr Graeme Innes AM, whose introductory remarks are produced below.

Introduction

Thank you for being so positive in responding to the invitation to attend this meeting.

I want to begin by making a few comments about the Commission's interest in this issue, the role we have played in working with industry and community groups in other areas, such as banking and television, to improve access and to briefly summarise issues raised in the Media Access Australia Background paper.

Commission interest and role

Over the past five years or so the Commission has hosted a number of meetings like this in order to bring together the disability community, industry and Government to discuss identified access problems and to try to forge partnerships and agreements to address those problems.

Often the decision to host such meetings is in response to a growing number of individual discrimination complaints the Commission or other anti-discrimination agencies are receiving, but just as often it is as a result of approaches from industry or the disability community for assistance to find ways of addressing problems more systemically.

Generally we would not convene such meetings unless we were convinced there was:

This approach has worked well in some industries, for example Roundtables we have run in the area of health access involving the RACGP, disability sector and Government have led to a number of initiatives that are having an effect on access to health care services. Similarly in the banking sector we have facilitated a number of partnerships between the Australian Bankers' Association, its members and the disability and aged community to address issues such as access to e commerce.

My intent is to facilitate a process that will improve access and equity for people with disabilities while at the same time recognising the need for planned and progressive change over time.

It may well be that during our discussions we identify other bodies that need to be approached and brought into the discussion or more research that needs to be completed, so I am not expecting that we will necessarily be in a position at the end of this meeting to agree on a plan for moving forward.

However, if as a result of this meeting we can begin that process I think we will have achieved something. If we cannot find common ground to achieve change together then at least all parties will be better informed of the issues each sector faces.

Let me now make a few comments on the background to this meeting and the issue of access to DVDs.

First I would like to thank Media Access Australia who prepared the background paper for us. I asked MAA to prepare the paper because I felt we would all benefit from a clearer understanding of just what exactly it is we are talking about, what technical questions exist, what is happening internationally and what is happening locally.

While I am sure people will want to fill in the picture the background paper paints during our discussions I think it gives us all a better feel for the issues that could be addressed to improve access.

It seems to me that the basic concerns about accessibility can be summarised as:

Views of participants

Following his introduction, Commissioner Innes invited the representatives from the disability sector to make presentations on the importance of accessible DVDs to their community and industry representatives to describe how the industry works and the issues faced in making accessible DVDs available.

Community views

Representatives from the disability sector made a number of points:

Industry views

Representatives from industry provided a picture of how industry works:

Discussion

Participants then considered the issues raised in both the Background paper and earlier presentations and a number of points were noted including:

Discussion focussed on the four areas of concern identified by Commissioner Innes in his introduction and identified a number of areas for further consideration.

1. Some DVDs that are released overseas have AD and/or captions on them but the Australian release does not .

2. Most Australian television series and features going onto DVD don't have captions or AD, including series that have been shown with captions on television.

3. There are a number of instances where the DVD covers are incorrectly marked as having captions and AD, or where they are not marked when they do have captions and/ or AD.

4. There is a problem with public information, particularly websites, where the information about access is not provided and/or you cannot search by access features.

Next step

Following discussion, Commissioner Innes proposed that a Working Group be established as soon as possible consisting of representatives from HREOC, MAA, the community sector and from industry to work through the issues raised with a view to reporting back in 6 months time.

Commissioner Innes also noted that the Working Group should identify other interested parties that should be involved in further discussion and any other matters relevant to achieving progress in this area.

Participants agreed to nominate members of the Working Group which would be hosted by the Commission. Participants also agreed to notes from the meeting being posted on the Commissions website following circulation.