Australian Federation of Disability Organisations

Kaye Gooch
AFDO Board Member

Over the weekend of 24th-25th May, I attended the 5th Deafness Forum Deafness Sector Summit. This event is held every two years by Deafness Forum of Australia, and I found this, my first Deafness Sector Summit, an educational and enlightening experience.

The Summit was at Rydge’s Lakeside Hotel in Canberra, an excellent venue. The opening began with a “welcome to country” by Agnes Shea, elder of the Ngunnwal Aboriginal people; then Alex Jones, Chairman of Deafness Forum, welcomed us all.
Day One had two people – Professor Jennie Brand-Miller, a cochlear implantee, and Carmel Batson, child of deaf parents, tell their life stories. Chrissy O’Reilly of Flinders University told of recent research into mental health and hearing loss.
Next came Government updates on issues affecting people with hearing loss – disability legislation, emergency warnings, and building access. This was followed by the Libby Harricks Memorial Oration by Professor Bob Cowan – his fine oration was on “access, equity and hearing loss in Australia in 2008”.

I then attended a Technology workshop – about new phone technology for those with hearing loss. We saw a DVD presentation on captioned telephone – where, instead of having to ring the National Relay Service number to make a text call, you just press the CAPTIONS button on the special “caption telephone” instrument; a trained captioner types the call for you to read. It will be interesting to see if this technology comes to Australia!

Day Two took us through the life cycle – with distinguished speakers highlighting the stages of life – infancy and early childhood; secondary and higher education; transition to the workforce; and older years – as affected by hearing loss.

The highlight was the talk by Li Cunxin, author of “Mao’s Last Dancer” – he spoke passionately about his life, from dire poverty in China, to becoming a dancer, defecting to the West, marrying and having three children. His eldest child,Sophie, was born totally deaf, and eventually fitted with two cochlear implants. Sophie, now 18, is doing very well academically at Melbourne Girls’ Grammar School. She gave us a beautiful display of her ballet dancing talent – we gave father and daughter a standing ovation!
A Technology workshop looked at captioning, especially captioning in independent cinemas. I would have liked more emphasis on the declining amount of captioning in the mainstream cinemas; but realise that people in outer areas – where the cinemas are mostly independent – have even less access to cinema captions than we in inner city areas do. Deafness Forum and Media Access Australia are working jointly to try to increase the very low amount of cinema captioning that we have.

The Dinner on the Saturday night was of course, a happy gathering for us all, with lovely food and good companionship!

I thoroughly enjoyed the 5th National Deafness Sector Summit, and it definitely widened my knowledge of all aspects of hearing loss. I certainly hope to attend the next one in two years’ time!