Resources for community radio to better include people with a disability, because everyone can do community radio!
Many Australian organisations and business, as diverse as AFL Australia, Government departments, and Lifeline are developing or implementing Disability Action Plans (DAP) also known as an Accessibility Action Plan (AAP). Those organisations realise they need to change what they do to be more fair, and to comply with the Disability Discrimination Act (1992). Your radio …
Continue reading "What’s a Disability Action Plan and why does a radio station need one?"
The Access and Inclusion Index provides a snapshot of your organisations progress on accessibility. Created by the Australian Network on Disability, the index can help you identify key areas you can improve upon and offers free (and paid) help doing that through their resources and services. "The Access and Inclusion Index gives organisations insights into …
Continue reading "Quiz: how accessible and inclusive is your org?"
So you want to change the way your organisation includes people with a disability, indigenous people, women or another disadvantaged group who need a voice? A good place to start, according to Clements, Spinks and Phillips in the Equal Opportunities Handbook (2009) is by changing what YOU personally do. Firstly, you need to learn about …
Sometimes screen readers used by vision-impaired people have trouble with digital documents. Vision Australia's Access Consultants Pierre Frederiksen and Leona Zumbo have developed a Digital Accessibility Toolbar that you can add to Word to help realise the dream! "An innovation that revolutionises the ease and speed of creating accessible documents in Microsoft Word, the Document …
Continue reading "Vision Australia: making docs accessible with the DAT tool"
Do you live within 5kms of 3CR radio in Melbourne? The Community Radio Accessibility Project is asking for your votes because, "The station needs up-to-date handrails, doors, ramps, taps and other things so that existing volunteers, new recruits and our wonderful guests can access the station more easily and safely." Pick My Project is a …
Ableism is something that affects people with disabilities on a recurring basis. The experience of disability is often complicated by ableist interpretations of the embodied experience of those experiencing disability, at times this prompts those who live with disability to view their own person by a pathologised lens. Gregor Wolbring raises that ableism is often left …
Continue reading "Guest post: Ableism, inclusion and my community radio experience"
So you've made a kickass website for your radio show, podcast or station. It does everything you want it to do. But did you know that to some of your users your website could be invisible? To others, your website might be confusing and hard to navigate because of cognitive disability or low literacy? The …
In my work as an advocate for PWD in community radio, I have heard many times from vision impaired and blind producers the need for documentation to be compatible with screenreaders. The Roundtable on Information Access for PWD provides some great resources and services for organisations seeking to make their websites and documentation accessible to a …
Continue reading "Making documents accessible: printdisability.org"
Take a look at this lovely visualisation by Equal Reality of the diversity of their workforce: https://equalreality.com/BlogPosts/DiversityReport_20180620 You can do an analysis of your own organisation using their template at the bottom of the linked page. Find out how diverse your organisation is!
Sometimes learning and teaching community radio can involve lots of text heavy reading materials (codes, rules and regulations, processes at the station). For people with reading issues, who have a learning disability or are just out of practice, this can be hard work and presents a barrier to learning that can contribute to non-completion. Universal …
Continue reading "Universal Design for Learning: making learning accessible to everyone"
