Accolades for selfless work

From: Knox Journal, Australia
Nov. 7, 2002

A BAYSWATER man was honoured for creating television screen captions for the hearing-impaired last month.

Bob Willis, a Bayswater local for more than 30 years, was honoured at last night's annual Supertext captioning award ceremony.

Mr Willis received a special achievement award for 10 years' support of captioning in Australia.

Captions for television programs, video, DVD or cinema screening gives 1.9 million deaf and hearing-impaired people in Australia access to media.

For more than a decade as managing director of Word of Mouth Technology in Bayswater, Mr Willis has advocated for the use of captions on all forms of broadcast media.

He is a former member of the national working party on captioning and, being hearing-impaired himself, has given advice about all forms of aids for the deaf and hearing-impaired.

"For more than a decade now, Bob has worked very hard to inform the deaf and hearing-impaired communities of Victoria about what equipment to use to get captions on their favourite TV programs," Australian Caption Centre chief executive Robert Scott said.

"This means they can watch TV and if they have problems, Bob is renowned for going above and beyond the call of duty to help them by visiting them in their own homes."

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