Disability Access News

Contributor: Rachelle Irving.
Source: Mental Health Council of Australia.
Posted: 31-01-2008

Disability organisations delivering services relating to mental health such as counselling or family support are eligible for a $40,000 one off grant and a series of free full day workshops across the country.

The Department of Health and Ageing has provided the Mental Health Council of Australia (MHCA) with $6 million to assist in the development of the capacity of non-government mental health organisations and other organisations delivering services relating to mental health. There are two opportunities:

* One-off grants of up to $40,000;
* Fourteen free, full day workshops around the country, designed to build stronger organisations;

About the Grants:

MHCA invites a broad range of services to find out more and apply. MHCA is keen to hear from organisations working in drug and alcohol rehabilitation, counselling, telephone help lines, family support services, men's services, asylum seeker support, eating disorders, suicide prevention and addiction.

Grant application forms and info available at the MHCA website from Friday 1 February 2008.

About the Workshops:

Providers of mental health services can also attend the 14 free, full day workshops around the country designed for building smarter and stronger not for profit organisation and also better projects. Everything from HR, IT and maintaining staff in a not for profit organisation will be covered.

For more information or to book please contact Rachelle Irving at rachelle.irving@mhca.org.au or 02 6285 0812.

Attached file 1: More information (PDF document, 80 kilobytes).

Contributor: Andrew, Infoxchange Australia.
Source: Deaf Children Australia.
Posted: 08-01-2008

AFS International and Deaf Children Australia are offering a deaf or hearing impaired secondary school student a scholarship in Norway for 11 months.

The student will stay with a host family from August 2008 and attend a local school, experiencing the benefits of student exchange that they would otherwise not be able to experience.

The scholarship is worth $12,000 and covers return travel, orientation, enrichment activities and medical costs.

To be eligible, the deaf or hearing impaired student must:

* Be aged between 15.8 and 18.8 in August 2008;
* Have good health;
* Be able to demonstrate to work consistently through their academic records;
* Be mature enough to cope with the challenges of living in another country and feeling part of an entirely different community.

Applications close on Monday 31 March 2008. There is a non-refundable application fee of $80.

For more information, visit the AFS website.

Source: Joint Councils Access for All Abilities.
Posted: 23-01-2008

Melbourne Sports and Aquatic Centre's popular Modified Sports Program is recommencing in 2008 with a 'bring a friend for free' day.

Every Saturday during school terms Modified Sports will be held from 2pm to 4pm.

Fully supervised, the program includes swimming, indoor sports including cricket, soccer, hockey, badminton and much more.

The 'bring a friend for free' day will include give-aways, prizes and lots of fun.

When: Every Saturday during school terms, 2pm to 4pm ('Bring a friend for free' day on Saturday 2 February).

Where: Melbourne Sports and Aquatic Centre, Aughtie Drive, Albert Park.

Cost: $8.50 per person, payable on arrival.

Download the attached flyer for further information.

Contact Name: Jeff Torney, MSAC Program Coordinator.
Contact Phone: 03 9926 1547
Contact Email: programsteam@msac.com.au
Attached file 1: Flyer (PDF document, 190 kilobytes).

Source: Pam Dolan.
Posted: 21-02-2008

The South Australian Ombudsman is currently investigating claims of poor service, failure to arrive, overcharging or giving incorrect information in response to complaints or not responding at all by Access Cabs South Australia.

Those people would have had recent bad experiences with Access Cabs South Australia are urged to contact the Ombudsman before Wednesday 30 April 2008 and quote: ombudsman reference 74307A01.

If you would like to email or submit a written statement details are as follows.

* Email: ombudsman@ombudsman.sa.gov.au

* Postal address:

Ombudsman SA
5th Floor, East Wing
50 Grenfell Street
Adelaide SA 5000

recently attended an event, Techshare India 2008, which was India's first technology event to promote accessible technology for people with disabilities. It was amazing to see some of the products, standards, and technologies that were showcased to empower people with disabilities. We've talked about some of them in this issue. Most of these were aimed at making things more accessible for disabled people, thereby empowering them to become more independent. In a country like ours, where nearly 6% of the population is disabled, which amounts to roughly 6 million people, these technologies are definitely a blessing in disguise.

But even more interesting is the revelation that some of these technologies and standards can impact a far wider number of people than the physically challenged alone. Take for instance a website. It doesn't take too much effort to make a website more accessible for the disabled. The website developer simply has to conform to a few standards, and pay a little more attention to the user experience. But the fruits of such an effort can be tremendous. The website would be more neatly organized, which would automatically make it easier to browse. This would automatically draw more traffic than a disorganized and cluttered one. So in the process of creating an accessible site for the disabled, you make your site more usable, which can thereby improve employee productivity or even increase business.

There are ample success stories to prove that this actually works. A leading bank in the US for instance, made its banking website more accessible much before the others. So while other banks considered it a waste of time, lots of people with physical disabilities became customers of this bank and started using its site for online banking. Looking at this trend, the other banks had no choice but to follow suit, but they had lost the first mover advantage by then.

There's a similar success story of an online store that made its site more accessible. Shopping in a grocery store can be quite a challenging task for anybody with physical disabilities. For them, placing an online order to a grocery store would be much more convenient. So the online store in question made its site more accessible. This resulted in an increase in traffic, and interestingly, a majority of them were normal people without any disabilities. They just found the site more usable.

Besides websites, lots of other things can be made more accessible as well. It just depends upon your imagination. A bank could make its ATMs more accessible, by putting text to speech or fingerprint scanners in them. A cellphone manufacturer could make cellphones with larger font displays and voice based operation, and much more. By doing this, companies can help themselves as well as the society.