Who are we?
This website was created by researchers at Curtin University and funded by the Australian Communications Consumer Action Network (ACCAN).
The operation of the Australian Communications Consumer Action Network is made possible by funding provided by the Commonwealth of Australia under section 593 of the Telecommunications Act 1997. This funding is recovered from charges on telecommunications carriers.
Meet the Research Team:
Katie Ellis
Professor Katie Ellis is Senior Research Fellow in Internet Studies at Curtin University and the convener of the Curtin University Critical Disability Research Network. She has worked with people with disability in government, academia and the community. She has authored and edited ten books and numerous articles on the topic, including an award-winning papers on television accessibility, elearning and access to the internet. She began an Australia Research Council (ARC) Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) in 2013 to investigate the impacts of the changing television environment on the social inclusion and exclusion of people with disability.
Mike Kent
Professor Mike Kent is Deputy Head of School for Media, Creative Arts and Social Enquiry at Curtin University. His recent publications include Disability and social media: Global perspectives with Katie Ellis (Routledge, 2017), Massive Open Online Courses and higher education: What went right, what went wrong and where to now with Rebecca Bennett (Routledge, 2017), and Chinese social media: Social, cultural and political implications with Katie Ellis and Jian Xu (Routledge, 2018). His forthcoming books Manifestos for the future of critical disability studies and Interdisciplinary approaches to disability: Looking towards the future are both edited with Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, Katie Ellis and Rachel Robertson and will be available, again through Routledge, in 2019.
Both Katie Ellis and Mike Kent were part of The Audio Description Working Group convened by the Federal government throughout 2017. Read more here.
Gwyneth Peaty
Dr Gwyneth Peaty is a Research Fellow in Internet Studies at Curtin University. Her interests include popular culture, accessibility, digital media and the Gothic. Recent publications include Power in Silence: Captions, Deafness, and the Final Girl in M/C Journal 20 (3) and Alternative Approaches to Engaging with Video Content: Mainstreaming Captions for Online Lectures in Higher Education in Australia (Report co-written with Mike Kent, Katie Ellis, Natalie Latter and Kathryn Locke).
Leanne McRae
Dr Leanne McRae is a research assistant in Internet Studies at Curtin University. Her publications include a monograph titled Terror, Consumption and Leisure: Spaces for Harm in a Post-Crash Era (forthcoming in 2018) and “Blackboard as in/accessible social media: Updating education, teaching and learning,” in Ellis, K. and Kent, M. (eds), Disability and Social Media: Global Perspectives in 2017.