Tuesday, April 10, 2018

GADIM, Curtin University in Australia to host Disability, Media and Human Rights conference April 19-20, 2018




For immediate release:
For questions, contact: katie.ellis@curtin.edu.au
April 11, 2018  

The Global Alliance for Disability in Media and Entertainment (GADIM) and Curtin University in Perth, Australia, are hosting a conference 9:30 a.m. – 5 p.m. April 19-20, 2018 at Curtin University on Disability, Media, and Human Rights: Policy, Practice, Performance. The conference is free and open to all.

The conference is informed by Article 8 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Personswith Disabilities, which affirms that the global disability community’s access to the media is a human right, as well as the way public attitudes towards people with disability are shaped. However, for people with disability, access to the media can be fraught with technological road-blocks, is punctuated by a lack of functional and reflexive representations, and perpetuates clichés about the creativity and consciousness of people with disability.  

This conference is an investigation of three nodes of intersection between disability and the media:  
Policy: Human rights, advocacy and access regarding media. 
Practice: Making media as a person with a disability. Making media for people with disabilities. 
Performance: Representations of disability in the media. 

Access to media is a human right, and the conference explores how government, policy makers and advocacy groups can ensure equitable and just access for people with disability to the media landscape in all its avenues.

Media makers with a disability and those who may make media with a disability consciousness will present at the conference on topics including: inclusive advertising, blogging, YouTube activism, community media, and gaming. DADAA digital arts will present a session about its community engagement focus on arts and disability. 

Speakers at the conference will include: 
Beth Haller, Co-founder, Global Alliance for Disability in Media and Entertainment (GADIM) and author of Representing Disability in an Ableist World 
Katie Ellis – Curtin University and author of Disability Media Work: Opportunities and Obstacles 
Robyn Lambird – Blogger, model, YouTube celebrity, My Trex Life 
Angel Dixon - Model, disability advocate, blogger, designer 
ShawnBurns – Disability and media researcher and journalism lecturer at University of Wollongong 

A film screening of the documentary “Defiant Lives,” which tells the story of the rise and fight of the disability rights movement in the United States, Britain and Australia, will be at 3 p.m. Friday April 20, followed by a panel discussion. 

Although the conference is free, please register via Eventbrite: 
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/disability-media-and-human-rights-policy-practice-performance-tickets-44626681606 


Description of image at top of page: A poster that says "Disability Rights = Civil Rights" is held by a wheelchair user in a crowd. Only the sign and the legs of people in the crowd are visible. Note: The image is used under a Creative Commons License: Attribution-Non-Commercial 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC 2.0). The image titled 'Disability Rights = Civil Rights' is available from the Flickr page of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.