New Horizons

In this week's programme we speak with New Horizons regular, and BCA staff-member, Rikki Chaplin. Rikki has been working hard on putting together a response paper to submit to the Royal Commission on the abuse, neglect, violence and exploitation of people with disabilities. Hear about Rikki's paper and the response he hopes to receive from the commission.

Thank you to the person who reminded me that I had neglected to republish part II of Padraig Naughton's interview, from 2016. Padraig visited Australia some years ago from Ireland, and we took some time to discuss the differences, at that time, for blind and vision impaired people, between our two countries. Also some more good news for watchers of audio described television.

This week we speak with Belinda O'Connor from Bioptic Drivers Australia. Hear about Bioptic driving, and the establishment of a legal framework to promote bioptic driving and make it easier to be assessed as a bioptic driver.

We harken back to episode 459 in this week's episode. Ahead of some news for Sydney branch members, we replay an interview from 2016. Graeme Innes, no stranger to New Horizons and to BCA generally, published his book around then. If you've not read it yet, here's a great opportunity. Graeme tells us of his motivation to write the book, and a bit about the process.

The focus this week is on the upcoming edition of Blind Citizens News, Blind Citizens Australia's quarterly magazine. Ahead of an interview with editor, Jonathan Craig, we bring you this edition's editorial.

Audio description is again our feature on New Horizons this week. We speak with Will McRostie from Melbourne, about Description Victoria, and a really interesting partnership with the National Gallery of Victoria.

In this week's programme we speak with returning guest, and BCA staff-member, Angela Jaeschke. Angela discusses her new role, and informs us of the impending commencement of a long awaited service! Also, Angela discusses some issues papers which BCA is currently formulating a response on.

We speak, in this week's episode, with Dianna Kube, and Tim Haggis, both of whom joined BCA two weeks ago - Dianna as Policy and Advocacy Team Leader, and Tim as Membership Development Coordinator. Find out about their background, and their views for the roles they have taken on.

This week we speak with Philip and Tess from the Australian Network on Disability. The describe an interesting opportunity for blind or vision impaired students, and an ongoing mentoring programme.

This week brings us the second part of our discussion from Global Accessibility Awareness Day. Andrew Arch, principal consultant with Intopia, talks about changes he's noticed, and what it has taken to get where we are in terms of digital access. Apologies for the audio dropouts, despite these I thought it was well worth bringing to you.