0/5

ABC News to add Auslan interpreter for Int. Day of Sign Languages

National bulletin to be signed and live captioned for people who are deaf or hard of hearing.

ABC News will incorporate an Auslan interpreter to its national 7pm bulletin on International Day of Sign Languages, Sunday 23rd September.

The Auslan interpreter will be visible through a picture-in-picture display. The bulletin will also be live captioned for people who are deaf or hard of hearing and do not use Auslan. It will also be made available on iview for later viewing.

Director of ABC News Gaven Morris said: “ABC News is pleased to again work with Expression Australia to provide a fully accessible news bulletin. Our Auslan-interpreted and captioned bulletin last year had a strong response, showing the support the Australian public has for accessibility.”

“With over 10,000 Auslan users across Australia and with one in six Australians being deaf or hard of hearing, being able to access the news through Auslan interpreting and captioning is a positive for accessibility in Australia”, said Christine Mathieson, CEO Expression Australia. “It underscores ABC News’s commitment to access and inclusion for all Australians.”

10 Responses

  1. In the UK, channel 4 was known to feature a sign language interpreter in weekly soap omnibus (airing the week’s episodes in one go on a Sunday) which was Hollyoaks. No idea if still used now but they had someone on screen during the omnibus.

  2. Pity it’s only one day of the year. Remember many years ago SBS (back in the Channel 0 days) used to have a sign language interpreter sitting next to George Donikian reading the news. Unfortunately it was only during news breaks IIRC and not through the actual main bulletin but for the early 1980s I guess it was a bold move given that closed caption subtitles were still a thing of the future.

  3. The real question is, why can’t this be a permanent thing? SBS and ABC have charters to uphold, and therefore should be more accessible. Even if say CH2 remains normal but the simulcast Ch20 is more accessible.

  4. I really don’t understand the need for both sign language and captioning. I would think captioning by itself would get the job done. But I am not deaf, so I could be missing something.

    1. 1. Many deaf people, in particular elderly people, has reading comprehension problems.
      2. Auslan has its own grammatical structure and is quite distinct from English.
      3. Closed captioning isn’t available in public areas such as shopping centres or airports. Try and imagine this during an emergency announcement! This is a very, very serious issue.
      And this is coming from a deaf person 🙂

      1. I do not have an issue with anything in this post….but I do appreciate your explanation…I am not hearing impaired…so I never really thought about such issues… ??

Leave a Reply