Brendan Lewis wrote:
> if I am a statutory monopoly like the AuDA, I would want my message to be
> targeted to Australians (eg a demographic that generally speaks english and
> is comfortable with terms like "arvo" and may or not may be deaf or blind.)

In commercial cases, I agree with you - a business should target its 
demographic audience.
But, I have 2 major issues with raising such an issue in this discussion.
1. google
The search engines are the major consumer of any website, because they 
will bring the majority of visitors to most sites, and search engine 
bots are deaf, dumb and (quite frankly) stupid. You have to make it as 
easy as possible for them to find your content, and then they will make 
it easy for your target market to find your content.
To specifically build something which shuts out any user group will 
probably shut out the bots to either a smaller or larger degree.
Ignoring accessability is ignoring your own interests.

2. AuDA's nature.
AuDA is not a commercial business in any sense that I use the word
It is a service to the Australian community. Its niche is 'Australians 
using the net', and 'hearing' or 'non-hearing' is not a part of the 
persona descriptions there.
So it should be doing its best to make this content available to every 
single Australian who is 'wondering how this net-thing works'.
I would suggest that if other sites have accessability problems then it 
is AuDA's duty to be even more accessable - not only because they are 
morally obliged too, but because the content they are trying to publish 
is beginner information and will help those who have problems on other 
sites.
Any group which is marginalised by existing websites has more need of 
having it all explained to them simply than others, so it makes sense to 
ensure that the new content will reach them.

There seems to be momentum for a copout that 'these are podcasts - they 
are *different*. You should *understand*'.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podcast (FWIW) says that a podcast is "a 
method of publishing files to the Internet, allowing users to subscribe 
to a feed and receive new files automatically by subscription."
I don't see either of these characteristics here. I can't subscribe (no 
feed) and there don't appear to be updates.
Someone at AuDA seems to have said 'hey, lets do some of these podcast 
thingies for that beginners project we were discussing - that'll be Leet!'
It isn't. They are just sound recordings placed on a website for download.

I am also disappointed that there does not appear to have been any 
replies from official AuDA representatives in this thread to explain the 
  choices for accessability made in the project's design. (I may not 
have recognised names.)

In short, the project is effectively a failure in that it disenfranches 
  portions of the Australian community. It needs to have transcripts 
added, and done as quickly as possible. I'd like to see a timetable for 
these changes to be made in the near future, without further silence.
And thats enough for a hot Sunday afternoon

Lea
-- 
Lea de Groot
Elysian Systems
Brisbane, Australia