Accessible Arts / arts + disability NSW

The new condition complements Screen Australia’s requirement, introduced in 2007, for all feature films to be captioned.

This initiative follows recommendations from the Federal Government’s Media Access Review final report, in order to provide around 600,000 Australians who are blind or vision impaired with access to audio described feature films.

Screen Australia CEO Ruth Harley said, “Better and more equitable audience access to Australian films at a reasonable cost is a benefit for the industry and community as a whole.”

“For some Australians it will mean being able to take their children to the cinema and share the experience of the film with them for the first time. For someone who has recently lost their sight it will mean they will not have to miss experiencing Australian films at the cinema,” said Dr Harley.

Both captioning and audio description will be required on all feature films applying for Screen Australia investment after 1 July 2011.

Screen Australia will be updating its fact sheets and other information available on its website to provide a reference for producers about cost and processes of audio description as well as captioning.

Screen Australia’s announcement of the new policy for feature films was highlighted on ABC's 7.30 program.

The segment on 7.30 provided personal stories of what audio described Australian movies will mean to people with vision impairment. Teenagers Anjana Thomas and Lara Nahkle are looking forward to being able to enjoy the cinema experience with friends from now on. Anjana said, “This kind of helped me know what’s going on, instead of asking someone, ‘Oh, what just happened?’ Yeah, I like it.”

On experiencing audio described cinema with her daughter Lara, Antoinette Nahkle said, “I saw her face light up. It makes me feel like actually one day she can get out there and go with a group of friends and go and enjoy things in life that everyone enjoys.”

Read Screen Australia’s media release on the announcement.

Source: Media Access Australia