Hi everyone,

Do you want to be part of something historic?

Wouldn't you love to have every single DVD in every store captioned and audio described by law?

For too long, the majority of DVD distributors have taken the easy way out, and not captioned or audio-described their DVDs.

Well, a group of us are going to do something about it, but we need your help.  

Deafness Forum of Australia is planning to coordinate an unprecedented campaign of complaints about DVD access.

To do this we need a number of individuals all around Australia to make complaints about DVDs without captions and/or audio description - complaints against both the DVD shop and the distributor.

We have a group of people around Australia willing to take part, and also one complainant in the ACT is prepared to take the case to court after failing to reach conciliation (ie they will go through the process but refuse to settle, so the case can be referred to court). From my knowledge, complaints about DVD accessibility have never been taken this far, so it may well be that we completely change the face of DVD accessibility in Australia. (For more details on how we are going to support this complainant, see the Deafness Forum website: www.deafnessforum.org.au)

If you would like to join us in this action, you only need to do three things.

1. Find a DVD in your local video store that doesn't have captions
   

2. Complain to the store in question about it.
   When you go to the DVD shop to try to hire the DVD (and you find it has no captions) make sure you point out to the person in the shop that you want to see it but since it does not have captions it is pointless for you.

3. Then write a letter to the Human Rights Commission about that DVD and its distributor.  Include the details (eg the date you went, the name and address of the DVD shop, the name of the DVD, the name of the distributor etc).  A complaint must have these sorts of specific details in it for it to be accepted by the Australian Human Rights Commission. You can either post the letter, or email it to newcomplaints@humanrights.gov.au.  Then the AHRC sends a complaint notice to the DVD shop and the distributor, and we wait and see what they have to say.

Hope you are willing to join this fight to make life easier for deaf, blind and hearing impaired people. I definitely am!

Please send this message on to anyone you think might be frustrated about the lack of captioning and/or audio description on DVDs.

Thanks,