Community organisation

This category recognises not-for-profit, community-based organisations that have consistently and over a substantial period of time:

• promoted community awareness, understanding and acceptance of people with a disability
• supported people with a disability to be involved in their community
• improved community access for people with a disability.

Awards were presented in the following two sub-categories.

Disability organisation – sponsored by the Centre for Excellence for Behavioural Support

This award recognises an organisation whose charter is to provide services to the disability sector.

Award recipient: NV Access Inc

NV Access is a non-profit organisation based in Queensland dedicated to the ideal that access to technology should not incur an extra cost for blind and vision impaired users. NV Access develops Non-Visual Desktop Access (NVDA), a free, open source screen reader for Microsoft Windows. Providing feedback via synthetic speech and Braille, NVDA enables blind and vision impaired people to browse the web, access email, work with documents and much more, whether at home, work or on the go.

Community association – sponsored by Queensland Rail

This award will be presented to an association or organisation whose core business is not directly disability related but has introduced measures to promote the social inclusion of people with a disability.

Award recipient: Townsville PCYC

In 2010, Townsville PCYC was accredited as a Sports Connect Community Hub. It was the first ever PCYC to receive this accreditation, and the third facility in Queensland. Since its accreditation, Townsville PCYC has established several key activities within its weekly schedule to ensure that it is inclusive in its practices; these include:

• Lifeline and Townsville PCYC Weekly Disability Sports Program facilitated by Salvation Army. Local disability service providers bring participants to the Club where they participate in different sporting activities. This activity currently attracts around 40 participants per week with the age of participants between 15-30 yrs.
• Autism/Aspergers Youth Group. A group for young people (12-18 yrs) who have either Autism or Aspergers meet fortnightly for activities and social interaction.
• Townsville PCYC Healthy Program that was run for two months for young people (12-18 yrs) with a disability. The program helped the young people develop healthy attitude towards exercise. Some of these participants have now become members of the club’s Gym and attend several times a week.