Ai-Media

Ai-Media (Access Innovation Media Pty Ltd) is a for-profit social enterprise. The company is dedicated to ending the experience of social, educational and vocational exclusion faced by people with disabilities.

History

The company headquarter is in Sydney, Australia with offices in Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and London. Tony Abrahams (CEO) and Alex Jones (Brand Ambassador) founded Ai-Media in 2003. Ai-Media commenced offline broadcast captioning for Subscription television in Australia in 2004.

In 2006, speech recognition technology improved to the extent that a skilled respeaking captioner could listen to a classroom teacher and respeak the lesson content into specially adapted speech-recognition software. In the same year, Ai-Media set AbOUT developing Ai-Live. Ai-Live was officially launched on April 23, 2010 at the National Deafness Sector Summit in Sydney, Australia. Ai-Live is a real-time, speech-to-text platform that equalises the classroom environment for students who benefit from captioned environment.

Current Status

In June 2010, Ai-Live was recognised by ABC-TV’s The New Inventors program, winning its episode and the People’s Choice Award in June 2010. The software and captioning system was also recognised in the September 2010 program final.

Ai-Media introduced live broadcast captioning in October 2010 on Sky News and Fox Sports. In November 2011, Ai-Media was a finalist in the National Disability Awards (Australia) and was granted Commercialization Australia support in December 2011. Ai-Media launched Ai-Live captioning and transcription services in schools, tertiary institutions, workplaces and conferences in August 2012, as well as its online portal.

In March 2013, Ai-Media CEO Tony Abrahams was acknowledged as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum. Ai-Live was launched in the UK on April 17, 2013, with technology partner Microlink. Ai-Media appointed an independent caption quality auditor in May 2013 and was awarded the NSW Department of Education and Communities captioning tender in June 2013.

On August 29, 2013, Ai-Media celebrated its 10th anniversary and announced the appointment of Deanne Weir as Chairman. On that day Ai-Media also signed a 5 year contract with the Nine Network to provide captioning for the free-to-air network. In October 2013, UK's remote captioning leader Bee Communications joined the Ai-Media group, extending Ai-Media's growth transform communication support for disabled people in the UK.

In November 2013, Ai-Media in partnership with University of Melbourne and Nesta joined for a teacher improvement program.

In April 2014, Ai-Media launched International Autism Pilot, an application which provides teacher a teaching and learning diagnostic tool.

On May 9, 2014, Alex Jones, the co-founder of the company stepped down but remained a shareholder of the company.

Services

Ai-Media provides technology solutions, captioning and transcription services for a range of environments including schools, universities, workplaces, conferences, webinars and events. Ai-Media also provides broadcast captioning, delivering offline captioning and live captioning using stenocaptioners, respeakers and offline captioners.

Awards

• 2013 Award for unique captioning service
• 2011 Commercialisation Australia Grant - Ai-Live
• 2011 Human Rights Awards – Business Award Finalist
• 2011 Deafness Forum of Australia Captioning Awards – Ai-Live Captioning for Best Promotion of Captioning or Best Consumer Education Campaign
• 2011 National Disability Awards – Business Award Finalist
• 2010 Deafness Forum of Australia Captioning Awards – Ai-Live - Project Digby for Event Captioning.
• Live 2010 The New Inventors - Episode and Peoples Choice Winner for Ai-Live
• 2004 A revolution accessible to all subscribers (FOXTEL)