Short Description

National advocacy and advice service for people with blindness and vision impairment in Australia. Deals with community access issues, social security and discrimination. Their website has a wide range of information on relevant issues.

More Details

Blind Citizens Australia (BCA) is the national association of blind and vision impaired Australians. Members work together to achieve equity and equality for themselves.

Blind Citizens Australia offers,
* information dissemination in particular through Blind Citizen News and our audio magazine Soundabout which are distributed quarterly,
* individual and systemic advocacy,
* a photo ID Card,
* peer support through a network of branches, National and State Conventions
* representation to Government on issues affecting the lives of blind and vision impaired people.

BCA's Advocacy service involves assisting people who are blind or vision impaired with disability related issues in the three main category areas of Social Security difficulties, disability services and disability discrimination.

Membership Requirements:

In order to become a full member or junior member of BCA, you need to be legally blind. Junior members are under the age of eighteen. Once the BCA office receives a completed membership application form, and your once-off membership fee of $10, you will become a member.

If a person is not legally blind, but is either vision-impaired or sighted, they are welcome to join BCA as an associate member. They still need to complete an application form, pay the once-off $10 membership fee, and can participate in all BCA activities. However, they are not eligible to stand for a position on the board, do not have voting rights in Branches or at any BCA elections.

Information is distributed in large print, braille, audio tape, email and computer disc. When an individual joins BCA they are asked to indicate their preferred format and this is then taken in to account when information is distributed.

Help to complete a BCA application form can be obtained by contracting the BCA Office. In many cases this form can be completed verbally over the telephone.