Ursula Stephens (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Science and Water) Share this | Hansard source

I am sure that everyone in the chamber knows that today is World Blood Donor Day. All of us have been invited to something quite extraordinary called the Prick-a-Pollie challenge, which is about encouraging members, senators and parliamentary staff to participate in Operation Lifeblood. Operation Lifeblood is about recruiting 45,000 new blood donors around Australia. I encourage everyone here who has not had a chance to donate yet to go and register with the van that is down in the forecourt of Parliament House and be part of the challenge. We all know that it is for a great cause.

But today I want to talk about something else quite exciting. Last week was Macular Degeneration Awareness Week, a national week to raise awareness of macular degeneration, which is the name given to a group of degenerative diseases of the retina that cause progressive, painless loss of central vision. The Macular Degeneration Foundation works to reduce the incidence and impact of macular degeneration in Australia. It deserves to be supported by all arms of government, especially because, as our population ages, with that ageing process comes a deterioration in people’s ability to see well. Macular degeneration is the leading cause of blindness in Australia, affecting central vision. One in seven people over the age of 50 are affected by the disease, which increases to one in three for people over the age of 75. Macular degeneration is primarily age related and most frequently affects people over the age of 50. It is sometimes referred to as age related macular degeneration, or AMD.

Of course, if your vision is impaired, your life is very severely restricted. Macular degeneration and other kinds of visual impairments affect people’s mobility, but perhaps most importantly they affect their ability to read. Help currently available for vision impaired people includes braille and talking books. Currently, the services involve the distribution of talking books to clients via an operator assisted library service. This involves an extremely labour intensive network and, needless to say, the costs associated with such a system are quite substantial. The Australian government outlays over $5 million every year for the existing postal concession, or about $250 per reader each year, to maintain and manage the talking books system.

There are also significant costs involved in supplying media material for clients and maintaining client audio equipment. It is estimated that the true cost to the community is between $800 and $900 per year per reader. As well, there are the costs in terms of client satisfaction. The current service offers a very limited range of transcribed material. When clients request the material that is available, there are substantial waiting times involved in retrieving and delivering it.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if a blind person could read the morning newspaper on the bus like everyone else or access the latest bestsellers at the same time as the rest of the community? Well, the good news is that they can. Technology is providing some exciting new solutions and—even better—the technology that I want to talk about is Australian technology. I am talking about the Books in The Sky initiative, which is an exciting new project between the Royal Society for the Blind in South Australia and Audio-Read Pty Ltd which has just been used in a national trial. The system provides accessible information in real time. It opens up a world of previously unavailable content for the user, as well as providing great savings over traditional delivery methods. Let me explain, simply, about Books in The Sky, or the BiTS project, as it is referred to.

The Royal Society for the Blind is the main provider of services to improve the quality of life for blind or vision-impaired Australians. The RSB has a vision, if I may use that word, for people who are blind or vision impaired to participate equally in all aspects of the community. People who borrow audio books from the library will tell you that they would be lost without them. But the technology is outmoded. How much longer, for example, will we be able to use cassettes? What do we replace them with? CDs pose special problems for the visually impaired. How does a visually-impaired person know which way up to insert them or how to navigate around them? Imagine having to choose between listening to a whole CD at one sitting or continually starting again at the beginning, or just guessing where you might be by holding the fast-forward button and hoping for the best. Not good enough, you think? So did the Royal Society for the Blind. They began to look for an alternative and, after much searching, found one right here in our own backyard. Isn’t that always the way?

A privately owned Australian company, Audio-Read Pty Ltd, has created a secure system of compression, encryption and transfer of digital information. It has the ability to transfer or receive any digital information and convert it into an audio format. This means it is able to provide print-disabled readers with books or other current information at the same time as the general community. The Books in The Sky, or BiTS, system uses broadband technology to allow users to quickly and easily download material from a central computer server into a battery powered audio handset that is not much bigger than a mobile phone. The user is able to store up to 40 hours of audio content on this ‘audio navigator’ and can then easily navigate around the chapters and pages of books, or various pages and sections of newspapers.

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The Books in The Sky program enables multiple users across a wide area to access the same digital text at the same time, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. How does it actually work? The client or the public library contacts Audio-Read requesting the desired item. It can be a book, magazine, newspaper or any piece of print. The Audio-Read centre then processes the request. This includes scheduling the delivery time of the transmission, reporting the use of the media to the relevant publisher and, finally, uploading the file to the satellite. The Audio-Read satellite then relays the securely encrypted information to the end user, who can then access the material via their Audio-Read navigator. It can be used in business or work situations as well as in reading for pleasure.

And the client is not restricted to simply listening to the text. Just as in certain situations we all want to reread or reconsider what we have just absorbed, Audio-Read provides a secure digital multicast system that is available in indexable braille or enlarged text on a standard television monitor, as well as the audio format. The benefits are not merely social, allowing the vision-impaired person to read the newspaper or the latest thriller; the technology can also be used in the workplace, and this opens up enormous possibilities for using the talents of these people in a much less clumsy way than is now available. If you have ever seen braille machines, or heard them when print is being translated into braille, you will know the kinds of problems I am referring to, and that is not to mention the space they take up—because of the noise, they are usually in a room of their own. Compare this with the audio navigator, a device about the size of a remote control.

The BiTS system uses broadband technology, so an audio book can be downloaded in less than five minutes. Because it is digital, there is no deterioration in quality with repeated use. Books can be ordered for next day delivery and magazines are available prior to release at newsstands. An unlimited range of digital text is available for transmission 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to an unlimited distribution area—so remote areas of Australia are equally as accessible as urban centres. The other good news is that the system requires only one master copy of data, so cost and storage requirements are minimised. In fact, the system delivers data at approximately 15 per cent of the current cost of media distribution.

I know all this because the Royal Society for the Blind has just completed a national trial of the system in partnership with a number of agencies that provided clients for the trial. These partners were: in New South Wales, the Macular Degeneration Foundation and North Sydney and Maitland public libraries; in Western Australia, the Association for the Blind of WA and the Armadale and Albany public libraries; in Tasmania, the Royal Guide Dog Association of Tasmania and the Hobart and Launceston public libraries; in Queensland, the Royal Blind Foundation of Queensland and the Maroochydore, Ipswich and Townsville libraries; and in South Australia, the Royal Society for the Blind of South Australia and the Burnside, Salisbury and Mount Gambier public libraries. You will be interested to know, Madam Acting Deputy President Troeth, as will all my Victorian colleagues, that the Royal Society for the Blind was not able to arrange a willing blindness organisation to participate in Victoria so the Victorian participants were supported via South Australia, utilising broadband internet to access the books and newspaper materials.

The national pilot was very thorough: the technology, set-up, use and range of resources and financial feasibility were evaluated over a five-month period. Ninety-four readers participated through a combination of 12 public libraries and five local blindness organisations or directly via the internet. A total of 25 readers downloaded all of their materials directly via the internet. An expanded catalogue of over 1,000 books was available, as well as a selection of 12 daily newspapers and some magazines. A small number of readers were also provided with Commonwealth government information to assess the use of the system for distributing this type of information.

The federal government, I am pleased to say, supported this program, when Senator the Hon. Kay Patterson was minister for health, with a grant of $150,000 to the Royal Society for the Blind in South Australia to help it roll out the BiTS system to public libraries and other partners in several states. I understand that the Royal Society for the Blind has recently requested further support for this project from Minister Abbott, and I certainly hope that funding will be forthcoming for what is undoubtedly a very worthwhile project. Creating this kind of partnership with Australian innovators to meet widening community needs is only to be encouraged. The outcomes are clear: equity in delivery and access, enhanced services for the print disabled and cost savings in media, storage and infrastructure.

The Books in The Sky project is the first significant advance for many years in providing books, magazines and newspapers to sight-impaired people in a simple to use and cost-effective way. It has the potential to revolutionise such services and eventually replace talking books on cassette tapes and CDs. It could be phased in over time, eventually replacing the existing print disability collection over the next five to 10 years, depending on when users are comfortable with the technology.

Macular degeneration is a very significant disease in our community. It will have long-term impacts on our health budget. Most people know at least one person who has MD. There are strong hereditary factors, dietary and lifestyle impacts. You cannot change your genes or your age, but you can reduce the risk of macular degeneration and you can slow it down if you have it by making these positive changes: have your macula examined at least every five years, eat fish two to three times a week, eat dark green leafy vegetables and fresh fruit, eat a handful of nuts a week, limit your intake of fats and oils and keep a healthy lifestyle—do not smoke, control your weight and exercise regularly. You should also think about taking a zinc and antioxidant supplement, and provide adequate protection for your eyes from sunlight exposure.

For those people who have macular degeneration, the BiTS project has great potential for improving the life of those with vision impairment in our society. Think of the potential for vision-impaired school-age children as well as those with age related macular degeneration and perhaps a range of other degenerative conditions, including early dementia. We should be celebrating this fantastic innovation as one of Australia’s greatest inventions of the decade. I congratulate Audio-Read, the Royal Society for the Blind, the Macular Degeneration Foundation and Mr Tony Starkey, the project manager. I commend the BiTS project and the work of the Macular Degeneration Foundation to you all.