What’s a Disability Action Plan and why does a radio station need one?

Types of accessibility issues include vision hearing motor skills and cognitive

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 …

Quiz: how accessible and inclusive is your org?

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 …

Vision Australia: making docs accessible with the DAT tool

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 …

Guest post: Ableism, inclusion and my community radio experience

Photo of On Air light

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 …

Making documents accessible: printdisability.org

Print Disability Roundtable Logo

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 …

Universal Design for Learning: making learning accessible to everyone

Cartoon Monkey says to line up of all kinds of animals including fish and elephant "for a fair selection everybody has to take the same exam. Please climb that tree"

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 …