Media Access Australia is Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

's only not-for-profit

Non-profit organization

Nonprofit organization is neither a legal nor technical definition but generally refers to an organization that uses surplus revenues to achieve its goals, rather than distributing them as profit or dividends...

 media access organisation. .

People with disabilities

Disability

A disability may be physical, cognitive, mental, sensory, emotional, developmental or some combination of these.Many people would rather be referred to as a person with a disability instead of handicapped...

, particularly those who are Deaf, hearing impaired

Hearing impairment

-Definition:Deafness is the inability for the ear to interpret certain or all frequencies of sound.-Environmental Situations:Deafness can be caused by environmental situations such as noise, trauma, or other ear defections...

, blind

Blindness

Blindness is the condition of lacking visual perception due to physiological or neurological factors.Various scales have been developed to describe the extent of vision loss and define blindness...

 or vision impaired

Visual impairment

Visual impairment is vision loss to such a degree as to qualify as an additional support need through a significant limitation of visual capability resulting from either disease, trauma, or congenital or degenerative conditions that cannot be corrected by conventional means, such as refractive...

, are in many cases excluded from mainstream audiovisual media, with often profound implications for educational outcomes, workforce participation and social inclusion.

MAA works to improve access to audiovisual media, such as TV

Television

Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...

, cinema

Film

A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...

, DVD

DVD

A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....

s and new media

New media

New media is a broad term in media studies that emerged in the latter part of the 20th century. For example, new media holds out a possibility of on-demand access to content any time, anywhere, on any digital device, as well as interactive user feedback, creative participation and community...

, by providing information about technological solutions that made audiovisual media accessible to people with disabilities. These solutions include audio description

Audio description

Audio description refers to an additional narration track for blind and visually impaired consumers of visual media...

, captioning and mainstream new media technologies. MAA also supports improvements in media access in Australia towards towards international best practice

Best practice

A best practice is a method or technique that has consistently shown results superior to those achieved with other means, and that is used as a benchmark...

 by identifying mainstream technological solutions and cost-effective ways to promote and implement them.

To this end, MAA works collaboratively with consumer organization

Consumer organization

Consumer organizations are advocacy groups that seek to protect people from corporate abuse like unsafe products, predatory lending, false advertising, astroturfing and pollution.Consumer organizations may operate via protests, campaigning or lobbying...

s, Government

Government

Government refers to the legislators, administrators, and arbitrators in the administrative bureaucracy who control a state at a given time, and to the system of government by which they are organized...

 and industry

Industry

Industry refers to the production of an economic good or service within an economy.-Industrial sectors:There are four key industrial economic sectors: the primary sector, largely raw material extraction industries such as mining and farming; the secondary sector, involving refining, construction,...

 in Australia and internationally.

Background

Media Access Australia was formerly the Australian Caption Centre (ACC), co-founded by Adam Salzer and Alexandra Hynes in 1982. In 2005, ACC sold its commercial operations including captioning services to Red Bee Media

Red Bee Media

Red Bee Media Limited is a media management company.Headquartered in west London, United Kingdom at the Broadcast Centre, with international offices in Scotland, Australia, France, Germany and Spain, Red Bee Media has 1500 employees worldwide including homeworkers and revenues of £153m in...

, and became Media Access Australia (MAA).

MAA is a uniquely independent not-for-profit organisation, mainly relying on its own investment

Investment

Investment has different meanings in finance and economics. Finance investment is putting money into something with the expectation of gain, that upon thorough analysis, has a high degree of security for the principal amount, as well as security of return, within an expected period of time...

s to fund its activities, rather than donation

Donation

A donation is a gift given by physical or legal persons, typically for charitable purposes and/or to benefit a cause. A donation may take various forms, including cash, services, new or used goods including clothing, toys, food, and vehicles...

s, or commercial operations.

External links

• Media Access Australia
• Media Access Australia: Audio Description