Monday, December 15 2008
Barack Obama's successful campaign for change resonates with many of us all over the world.
In a submission to the Australian Government's National Disability Strategy (designed to implement the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities that Australia ratified in July 2008) Ai-Media called for a New Deal on Social Inclusion to change forever the way we, as a society, deal with impairment: "Critical to the reform of the disability funding and transfer arrangements is a shift from trying to limit the cost of picking up the pieces of exclusion to a relentless focus on funding and developing proactive solutions that deliver real and effective access and inclusion for individuals with impairment in the most efficient manner. By pursuing and funding policies that promote a whole-of-government, whole-of-life approach we will begin to reduce the enormous direct and indirect burden caused by the social exclusion of people with disability.
"Investment in this social infrastructure is an imperative if we are to start to reduce the growing direct and indirect costs of not having provided access in the past. By providing access to, and inclusion in, society for people with disabilities, we stand to facilitate their full participation as contributing members of the community – and transform the experience of life for them, their carers and their families.
"This is the crux of the New Deal. It’s about bringing everyone into the tent."
The key outcomes of submissions will be summarised in a report early next year. The National Disability Strategy will be released in mid 2009.
If Stargate SG-1 or Atlantis are your favourite programs, then tune in to the hottest new TV destination now in Widescreen with CC. Justin Arnall, Programming and Acquisitions Manager for TV1 and SCI-FI, and a long-time supporter of captioning, was thrilled to announce that Stargate Atlantis and SG-1 are now captioned. The sky's never the limit on Sci-Fi, channel 132 on the FOXTEL and AUSTAR platforms. Tune in at 11am, 4pm and 9:30pm Monday to Friday and from 7:30pm Tuesdays and Fridays for your fix and check out the Sci-Fi channel website for more. In welcoming the announcement, Media Access Australia congratulated FOXTEL on fast becoming a role model for media accessibility with over 100,000 hours of closed captioned content broadcast on various channels over the last 12 months.