As reported in The Australian this morning, read the full article here.
The ABC and the federal government have been accused of neglecting the basic human rights of Australia's blind population and are now the subject of 21 complaints to the Australian Human Rights Commission for failing to fund and operate a television audio service.
The complaints, lodged yesterday, accuse the ABC and government of neglecting obligations under the Disability Discrimination Act 1992 and the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
An audio description track will cost $1 million a year to operate and provide 14 hours of audio description on various programs. The service is standard in the US, Britain, and other European countries, South Korea and New Zealand.
A campaign by Blind Citizens Australia, which represents 600,000 blind and visually impaired people, last year, led to the trial of an audio system for several months and expectations the service would be funded in the last budget.
The report and recommendations of that trial were completed by the ABC and handed to former communications minister Stephen Conroy. A spokesman for new Communications Minister Anthony Albanese said: "The government is considering the outcome of the trial and seeking further details to inform its decision."
One of the complainants, Scott Nixon, 34, said the lack of such a service meant he could only watch his favourite shows, including Doctor Who, with someone describing the action to him.
"I want to know when a Dalek is about to fire its weapon," he said. "Without a descriptive audio track, I can watch and only get so much before I have to ask someone what happened in a scene. It gets frustrating and depressing to rely on other people."
Mr Nixon, who lives in Melbourne's eastern suburbs, said audio description was an "amazing" experience. "The ABC calls itself the public broadcaster but there is a large group of people who can't access their programs...I don't see why we have to wait so long for something that is standard in other countries."
Greg Madson, Blind Citizens' vice-president, said that the failure to fund the service in the last budget had been "a massive let-down".
"People think blind people don't watch TV, but, we do. We just don't get it as much because we miss important bits."
The campaign is supported by the Australian Communications Consumer Action Network, spokesman Asher Moses saying: "You've got to question our public broadcaster's priorities if it can't spare $1m a year of its windfall $90m in extra funding to provide bare minimum audio description."
An ABC spokesman said: "The ABC delivered a report to the government on its experience in conducting the trial. The ABC's advice is the government is considering the report."