Skip to content
Finalists - Business Award
Awarded to a business with a proven track record in promoting and advancing human rights in the Australian community.
A business is a profit-seeking enterprise (a person, partnership, or corporation) engaged in commerce, manufacturing, or a service. For the purposes of the Human Rights Awards, businesses in the legal profession should nominate for the Law Award, not the Business Award.
The finalists for 2011 are:
The Captioning Studio - Winner
The Captioning Studio brings together technology and a passion for inclusion of people with hearing loss.
The business provides daily television captioning which gives viewers with a hearing loss full access to television programs, and also captions and subtitled DVDs and videos. The Captioning Studio also provides theatrical captioning in venues across Australia.
Their unique Go-Theatrical! software is used in theatres and venues across Australia. They have also recently launched ‘Captioning Equipment Kits’ which provide free and shared use of equipment such as plasma screens, cabling, laptops and software to venues in capital cities around Australia.
They’ve also developed new technology, Clickable Captions, which encourages website owners to make online content accessible by displaying a full transcript next to online videos.
Enlighten Education
Since 2003, Enlighten Education has provided in-school workshops to help girls aged 12 to18 years develop better self-esteem. A team of 10 experienced professionals work with more than 20,000 girls annually, delivering workshops that encourage constructive conversations about gender, identity, education, careers and their futures.
The workshops empower girls at the same time as educating the community about their rights to freedom from sexual harassment, violence and bullying, fairness and equity in education and career opportunities. They also promote awareness of the importance of healthy body image and self-esteem.
Enlighten Education aims to end the social and cultural pressures that place young women at greater risk of anorexia and bulimia nervosa, depression and anxiety, substance abuse and self-harm.
Trent McCarthy & Associates
Trent is a comedian, consultant and facilitator based in Melbourne. He uses his business, professional skills and networks to focus attention on the experiences of young people in the juvenile justice system and state care.
Trent co-founded The Whitelion Bail Out event in 2006. The event creates an "inmate experience” and has raised over $1.5 million since its inception for programs supporting young people in the juvenile justice system.
On one night each year at the Old Melbourne Gaol, Trent and his team raise awareness about the plight of young people who face a life of imprisonment. This is achieved by giving people the experience of a young person being arrested, facing court, being interviewed, locked up and eventually being released.
More than 175 business people participated this year with $400,000 being raised.
Access Innovation Media Pty Ltd (Ai-Media)
Access Innovation Media, (Ai-Media), developed Ai_live@Work, which provides live captioning for workplace meetings.
Initially created for schools and universities, a corporate version of the Ai_live@Work was launched in mid-2011.
The system uses telephone conferencing to pick up the conversation in a meeting. This is then transformed into a specific voice recognition program in real time which appears as text on an Apple iPad or laptop.
The technology also shows who is speaking at the time and sends a transcript to all attendees as a record.
The company says this technology offers huge possibilities for people with disability in the workplace and everyday life.
