Captions on television screens across Australia have played a cruical role in the lives of D/deaf and hard of hearing people.

People who are not deaf also use captions - particularly in a noisy environment, for teaching and learning, and to improve literacy skills.

Deaf Australia (http://deafaustralia.org.au/) have lobbied for better captioning quality on Australian TV for many years. To date, they have achieved:

1996: Successful lobbying for live captioning of national evening news services.

2001: All news, current affairs and prime time TV programs to be captioned (6pm-midnight).

2003: Deaf Australia, along with two other community representative organisations accepted a proposal from the free-to-air TV stations to increase captioning to 70% of programs between 6.00am and 12 midnight by 2007.

More of Deaf Australia's lobbying work in regards to captioning in Australia can be seen here: http://deafaustralia.org.au/advocacy/captioning/

Without captions, Deaf and hard of hearing people would not have been able to watch TV. They would not have been able to keep up with the ever-changing society. They would not have been able to learn about popular culture, and most importantly, the world around them.

By demolishing mandatory reporting on closed captioning for free-to-air broadcasters, the quality and quantity of captions will decrease, thus putting Australia backwards. We are already decades behind United Kingdom and United States of America in regards to captioning, and if the Bill is passed, it will cause Australia to fall even more behind.

Malcolm Turnbull, we are asking you to keep mandatory reporting on captioning for free-to-air broadcasters.

DISCLAIMER: I do not represent Deaf Australia.

Photo credit to: katelocke.wordpress.com