Television's transition to the Internet: Disability accessibility and broadband-based TV in Australia

Whereas entertainment has featured negatively in the broader NBN debate currently occurring in Australia, within the disability sector it has been recognised as revolutionary. Government, industry and technical analysts describe digital television, particularly that delivered via broadband, as potentially enabling to people with vision and hearing impairments through the more widespread provision of accessibility features such as audio description and closed captions. This article interrogates the approach to accessibility taken by two case studies of broadband-based television: Netflix and catch-up TV. Netflix, which is not officially available in Australia, is often presented as the future of television, while catch-up services provide an example of the current broadband-based television paradigm in this country. Although accessibility features may be available on broadcast television or DVD release, each of these forms of broadband-based television has either previously (Netflix) or currently (catch-up) stripped accessible functions to stream online. The discussion reflects on both activist interventions of people with disability and the industry standards

Testing the Causality between Electricity Consumption, Energy Use and Education in Africa

We investigate the existence of causal relationships between energy consumption and education (enrollment in primary secondary and higher education) for a sample of 16 African countries over the period 1971-2010 (according to availability of countries' data). We use the panel-data approach of Kónya (2006), which is based on SUR systems and Wald tests with country specific bootstrap critical values. Our results show that education and energy use are strongly linked in Africa. There is bidirectional causality between primary, secondary and higher education and energy use for several countries. Moreover, electricity consumption plays a crucial role in the energy-education links in Africa.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/132984/1/wp1084.pd