Australia · Open market · Operating partnership
The UN told Australia to legislate. It said no.
Access on this page: Signed: Auslan — pending How this page is tested
This page in sign language
Signed end to end by a Deaf creator, credited by name. International Sign on the global site; your national sign language on your country page.
Lauren Henley, a blind Melbourne advocate, spent seven years carrying one complaint to the UN: Australian television carries almost no audio description. In 2022 the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities found Australia in breach and recommended legislation. The government replied that it disagreed.
Australia has been setting precedents since 2000 — the Sydney Olympics website ruling, the 2010 cinema access plan across 242 screens — and still enforces them one complaint at a time. That is the market: the mandate exists in precedent, and nobody delivers it.
Open the conversation Skip to the partnership
Video pending
Global partner video — spoken, captioned, and signed.
The pattern
A quarter-century of precedent. Still complaint by complaint.
Australia's sign language is Auslan; its captioning quotas for broadcast television are among the world's oldest. And still:
2000 Bruce Maguire beat the Sydney Olympics over Braille and an inaccessible website — the landmark that established digital access. A quarter-century later, government sites still lock blind users out until someone complains. Seeds: Maguire v SOCOG; ACT "Fix My Street", 2024.
Half of blind and low-vision Australians report being refused taxis or rideshares over their guide dogs — conduct that has been squarely illegal for decades. Seed: Guide Dogs Australia survey, 2023.
Fourteen hours a week of funded audio description, on two channels, is the entire national provision — the answer seven years of advocacy and a UN finding have so far produced. Seed: UN CRPD communication, 2022.
The gap is not law — the Disability Discrimination Act has said "no discrimination" since 1992. The gap is delivery: nothing exists between the right and the complaint.
Why captions alone don't finish the job → Why Sign Language
The verdict
Australia lost at the UN — and nothing was mandated.
- 1992 The Disability Discrimination Act writes the duty.
- 2015 The domestic complaint is rejected outright.
- 2022 The UN finds Australia in breach: no audio description mandate, anywhere.
- Today The finding is non-binding. The mandate still doesn't exist. The audience still waits.
She fought seven years for fourteen hours a week.
The rest is delivery — and delivery is us.
Delivery, built
We've seen the third act.
Where we work, Deaf and blind creators are paid to produce sign language, captions, and — first-class, not an afterthought — audio description; city governments write access into law with ally at the table; Deaf residents of Bohol have been trialing the platform in their own province; and in Singapore we ran trials with the Lighthouse and the Singapore Association for the Deaf.
And for the cinema: our patent-pending glasses deliver the film in synchronised Auslan, captions, or audio description — every seat, every session, without waiting for a quota that never came.
Your market
Now imagine not waiting for the mandate.
Audio description on any screen — supplied by a platform, not rationed at fourteen hours a week.
A Melbourne or Sydney cinema where a blind patron and a Deaf patron sit in the same session, each served.
Auslan on the services Australians actually use — made by Deaf Australians, paid for their work.
Whole-of-government procurement, broadcasters ahead of a mandate everyone knows is coming, and one of the world's strongest disability-advocacy sectors. Every sign language is a market someone organises first — whoever organises Auslan, keeps it.
The builder
This story needs its Australian builder.
We bring
- The platform, the API, and the creator playbook
- The compliance-to-comprehension playbook, proven city by city
- The brand, training, and the patent-pending cinema line
You bring
- Standing in Australia — exhibition, broadcast, government services, or the community
- Operating capacity and relationships
- Market investment, and the ambition to deliver what the UN said was owed
A licensed market operation, built with the local community — terms discussed directly. Deaf-led and blind-led organisations and entrepreneurs are explicitly welcome.
More ways in
Sponsor the access
A brand underwrites described and signed content — and reaches the audience the broadcasters left waiting.
Distribute & integrate
Broadcasters, streamers, and venues carry the access through one API — ahead of the mandate, not behind it.
Host the first
A council or a chain stages Australia's first fully described-and-signed screening day.
Invest
Back the Australian operation alongside an operator — or introduce us to the one who should run it. Investors
Next step
The UN said Australia owes its audience the picture and the sound. Delivering it is the business.
Write to us — form, email, or a signed or spoken video message. The process: intro call → NDA → the Australia market dossier → terms.
Contact us about Australia Download the one-page Australia brief
- Are you operating in Australia today?
- Not yet. That is the point of this page.
- What does a partnership include?
- The platform, the playbook, the brand, and our team beside yours — under a licensed market structure whose terms we discuss directly.
- We're a broadcaster or streamer — can you serve us directly?
- Yes — that is the Platform page. Serving your audience doesn't wait for a market partner.