One of our key goals in organising this year’s AAANZ conference has been to make it as accessible as possible. You can read more about our conference organising principles here.
One of the most important ways we’ve done this is to try to keep registration costs as low as possible (especially concession prices), and to offer bursaries for low-income scholars and artists, and for Indigenous scholars.
Captions and Recording
We’ve put in place a few measures to make the conference more accessible to people with vision and hearing impairments:
Captioning
We have engaged AI Media to provide live closed captioning for all keynote events:
-
- Keynote addresses by Julie Nagam, ruangrupa, and Talia Smith + Nanette Orly.
- Conference Welcome (including Welcome to Country).
- Closing event (including AAANZ award announcements).
In addition, all panels will take place in Zoom Meetings equipped with Zoom’s automatically generated closed captions. We know these captions are far from perfect, but unfortunately the cost of providing live captions for all 79 panels far exceeded our budget.
Recording
We will be recording all panels, and making these available to all conference registrants for a specified period after the conference.
The recordings will include the Zoom-generated closed captions.
Audio Descriptions
To benefit people who are blind or vision impaired, we encourage all panellists to consider using ‘audio description’ – the narration of non-verbal elements in your presentations.
Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property
Our goal is to make this year’s AAANZ conference as accessible as possible to Indigenous presenters and audience members, and to make sure that Indigenous culture is treated with respect.
As such, we affirm the right of Indigenous peoples to maintain, control, protect, and develop their Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property (ICIP). ICIP includes all aspects of Indigenous peoples’ cultural heritage, traditional knowledge and traditional cultural expressions. While clearly recognised by the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, ICIP rights are not well protected by Australian copyright law.
We ask that any conference participants making use of ICIP make sure that they have followed due process with the Indigenous owners of that ICIP, especially in terms of communication, consultation and consent, as well as attribution.
At the Conference itself, we ask that presenters respect ICIP by:
- Using respectful language, attributions and terminology when discussing Indigenous ICIP.
- Following protocols around the use of images and names of people recently deceased.
- Following protocols around the use of sensitive materials, such as sacred, secret, or gender-based materials.
For more information about ICIP, we recommend the Australia Council’s Protocols For Using First Nations Cultural And Intellectual Property In The Arts (2019 edition).
Some Helpful Resources
Resources at Accessible Arts (NSW) (Includes links to accessibility organisations in other states and territories)
Australia Council for the Arts, Protocols For Using First Nations Cultural And Intellectual Property In The Arts (2019).
Spence Messih & Archie Barry, Clear Expectations: Guidelines for Institutions, Galleries and Curators Working with Trans, Non-Binary and Gender Diverse Artists (2019)
National Association for the Visual Arts, Code of Practice for the Professional Australian Visual Arts, Craft and Design Sector
NAVA / The Australian Council for the Arts, The Indigenous Art Code (2010)