Stephen Conroy (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

I am delighted to inform the Senate that just today legislation was passed in this chamber that will greatly improve access to television for people with hearing impairments. It is expected that by 2020 hearing loss is likely to affect more than five million Australians. The bill passed today introduces new legislative requirements that will increase the amount of captioning on commercial, national and subscription television broadcasters. The bill will mandate that emergency warning broadcasts on television must be transmitted in the form of text and speech. It also requires the ACMA to determine quality standards for captioning in terms of readability, comprehensibility and accuracy. These measures come on top of a technical trial of audio description to be conducted on the ABC which I announced in February of this year. (Time expired)