ACCAN has released its 2013 Grants Scheme Guidelines ahead of the 2013 round of the ACCAN Grants Scheme, which opens Monday 18^th February.

Read more: 2013 Grants Scheme opening soon

People experiencing homelessness, Aboriginal youth and the Deaf community are among the consumers set to benefit from this year's ACCAN grants scheme.

Read more: New ACCAN grants projects announced

For communications consumers, the challenge of overcoming information overload to choose a new product and service is sometimes just too much. As one participant in the Seeking Straight Answers research puts it, "[I just want] someone to do the work, someone who knows what they're doing to find me the best deal...There's so many things you've gotta do that the inconvenience of doing all that outweighs any benefits you're going to get".

Read more: Seeking Straight Answers: a short video

A reminder to ACCAN members that nominations for Directors to fill three vacancies on the ACCAN Board are now open and will close at 5pm AEDT 24 September 2013. Newly elected Board members at the 2013 AGM will sit for a three-year term until the Annual General Meeting in 2016.

Read more: ACCAN Board nominations open

With less than two weeks until the 2013 Federal Election, there's still a lot of confusion among the general public regarding the National Broadband Network (NBN), one of the biggest election issues. ACCAN has compared both parties' NBN policies, including what the Greens think, as we want all consumers to have a clearer idea of what the competing NBN policies will offer them.

Read more: ACCAN’s quick guide to the competing NBN policies

When the trial of audio description (AD) ended on 5 November last year, Communications Minister Senator Stephen Conroy acknowledged the strong desire for the service to continue and agreed to work together with all parties towards establishing a permanent AD service on Australian TV in the future.

Read more: Communiqué: an update on audio description on TV

Transcript of the speech given by ACCAN Chief Executive Teresa Corbin at the CommsDay Melbourne Congress.

Read more: Speech: Teresa Corbin at CommsDay Melbourne Congress 2012

ACCAN has been asked to nominate two consumer representatives to sit on the Communications Compliance Advisory Committee. Communications Compliance is a newly formed company established to monitor telecommunication industry compliance with the recently approved Telecommunications Consumer Protections (TCP) Code.

Read more: Call for consumer representatives

ACCAN is accepting Expressions of Interest to fill a vacancy on its Independent Grants Panel.  The role of the Panel is to assess eligible applications to the ACCAN Independent Grants Scheme and recommend the strongest to the ACCAN Board for funding.

Read more: Independent Grants Panel vacancy

National Telework Week is running from 12 to 16 November 2012. Telework is working regularly from a place other than the office, in most cases from a home office. During National Telework Week businesses are encouraged to trial telework by allowing their employees to work remotely for one or more days during the week and register their involvement online.

Read more: National Telework Week

Great news! The communications regulator, the ACMA, has released a new captioning standard designed to make television more accessible to people who are deaf or hearing impaired.

Read more: New captioning standard announced

ACCAN Chief Executive Teresa Corbin and Senior Policy Adviser Jonathan Gadir have given evidence in front of the Joint Committee: National Broadband Network (Rollout of the National Broadband Network) in Sydney this morning. They discussed the need for low-income broadband affordability measures, voice-only services and the demand for consumers for independent information about the NBN.

Earlier this year ACCAN published a NBN: Guide for Consumers, which Corbin says has been very much in demand. ACCAN says it looks forward to the establishment of a Consumer Advisory Panel within NBN Co, to meet quarterly to discuss issues that are of concern to consumers.