DEAFNESS FORUM OF AUSTRALIA 2005 CAPTIONING AWARDS
Allow me to begin by also acknowledging the traditional owners of the land on which we meet, and pay my respects to their elders both past and present.
Allow me to begin by also acknowledging the traditional owners of the land on which we meet, and pay my respects to their elders both past and present.
Acknowledgment of where we stand and where we are is, it seems to me, an essential precondition to good decisions about where we want to go, and how we might get there.
Thank you AMTA for support in attending the first meeting of the TEITAC Committee, held from Sep 27-29 at the National Science Foundation in Arlington Virginia, near Washington. While in Washington I also had a meeting with the Telecommunications Industry Association during which I briefed them on the legislative background and current situation concerning access to telecommunications products and services in Australia by people with disabilities.
I also acknowledge representatives here of the disability community and the telecommunications industry. Also of course I acknowledge Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman Mr John Pinnock and his staff.
I would like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which we stand, and pay my respects to their elders both past and present. I make this statement at any function where I speak in order to:
I want to start, though, by talking for a few minutes about the broader legislative context under the Disability Discrimination Act and about what all of this is for in terms of achieving access and inclusion.
I also acknowledge Ministers with us here today; Ambassador Don Mackay joining us from New Zealand by video link; and many friends and colleagues from the disability and human rights community.
The title I have taken for these remarks is "Is there a slow lane on the information superhighway". I fear that by now there may already be something dated or quaint in using the term "information superhighway". I am going to use it anyway, and perhaps make matters of style worse by adding reference to a slow lane, because I think a few important issues are suggested by this title.
I would like to begin by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land on which we meet, the Wurundjeri People of the Kulin Nation, and pay my respects to their elders past and present.
We are on Aboriginal land – and as a mark of respect to the traditional owners of this country – I want to recognise their culture and their law because they are integral to what we now call Coogee.
Summary: Australia’s National Disability Strategy provides a framework for implementation of the Convention on the Rights of Persons and for means for enhancing reporting under the Convention. Further development and implementation of the NDS should be informed by the Committee’s reporting guidelines and by the dialogue between the Australian Government and the Committee in considering Australia’s reports. Some enhancements to the reporting guidelines may also be helpful.
This launch comes a few days after the International Day of Disabled Persons which this year has electronic information access as its theme and the release last Monday of the Australian Bankers' Association progress report on Accessibility of Electronic Banking.
Dr Sev Ozdowski OAM Human Rights Commissioner and Disability Discrimination Commissioner Human Rights & Equal Opportunity Commission, Sydney, Australia
Paper delivered by Elizabeth Hastings Disability Discrimination Commissioner 1993-97 at the Creating Accessible Communities Conference Fremantle, 12 November 1996
It would clearly test to destruction the tolerance of the ordinary red-blooded Australian to have a Pom getting off the plane from London and telling them how to run their country. So I shall not presume to say how the current human rights debate in this country should be resolved. But perhaps I may contribute some thoughts, prompted by our own experience in the United Kingdom, acknowledging as I do so that the Australian context, while in some ways similar, is in others significantly different.
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