From: Gary Kerridge [g.kerridge@ballarat.edu.au]
Sent: Wednesday, 19 May 2004 12:59 PM
To: disabdis
Subject: ASTRA Exemption application.

I wish to submit a brief response to ASTRA's application for a five year exemption to provide captioning to programs.

I support the suggestion from Women with Disabilities Australia that the exemption should be no more than three years.  Arguments from K.Ballam and WWDA have argued many points as to why ASTRA should not be
given a five year exemption.   I wish to add two more points to their
arguments rather than repeating their already well argued cases.

The first of these of these is in regard to profitability.  ASTRA  have argued that to be made to comply with captioning standards will effect profitability.  They have argued that they currently are only subscribed to 23% of Australian households and that the Deaf and hearing impaired population would make no significant inroads into improving this situation.

It is well known that Deaf and hearing impaired are the most significant disability population in Australia.  Figures vary but a conservative and well used estimate is that 1 in 10 Australians have a significant hearing loss.  By offering captioning this population of people are more likely to subscribe, hence increasing profitability.  It would be, in fact, in ASTRA's interest to provide captioning as soon as it possibly could.

Apart from the Deaf and hearing impaired population it is not so well known that people from NESB backgrounds, where English is their second language and people with learning disabilities also benefit from
captioning.   The Liberated Learning Project of the University of
Sunshine Coast has researched the impact of voice to text software on learning and comprehension.  

Essentially software has been developed where voice is automatically transcribed to text.  This has applications in the learning environment.
 What it means is that as a lecturer talks his/her lecture is transcribed into text form by the computer. Whilst at this stage of the research there are some difficulties with accuracy it has been noted that if the lecturers voice is supplemented with a text version this has enhanced comprehension for people where English is a second language.
One could argue that this would also be the case with captioning. 

What this means is that captioning can, in fact, make subscription TV more accessible not only to Deaf and hearing impaired but other groups in the population such as NESB people and people with learning disabilities.  Conceivably this would in fact enhance profitability and
subscription and not decrease it.    

My second response concerns ASTRA's argument that Free to Air Television and overseas subscription television companies have had more time to implement captioning and that even after this time they have not achieve 100 percent captioning.  I would argue that ASTRA is in the fortunate situation where it is in fact able to learn from the experience of these companies.  In the past it has been very much new ground where awareness and quality have been developed over time.

ASTRA, because it can benefit from this accumulated knowledge of other companies that caption programs, is in a fortunate position to be able to implement captioning at a faster pace than previously possible. 
Research and consultation into the experience of other companies providing captioning will mean that they do not need as much time that other companies may have needed. 

I am very much in favour of a sliding scale of accessibility being worked out for ASTRA to provide access to captioning.  Some degree of accessibility should certainly be provided well with in five years and in doing so it is likely to increase subscriptions and hence profitability.

GARY KERRIDGE
Regional Disability Liaison Officer, Ballarat.
g.kerridge@ballarat.edu.au