NARRATOR: Australia's Disability Discrimination Commissioner
Graeme Innes
thrives on the competition of weekly races sailing on Sydney Harbour.
People with disability want to take control of our own lives.
MAN: I think that's about it.
We want to do what we can, what we want, when we want.
Yet Graeme experiences prejudice almost every day.
There's an assumption because he can't see, he's not capable.
On the water, he's free.
(PEDESTRIAN CROSSING BEEPS)
It's a freedom he's spent his life fighting for.
He's made his own complaints under the DDA.
GRAEME INNES: All of my life, I've used trains.
I can get on and off the train, I can find a seat,
but the one thing that I don't know
when I'm travelling on the trains is where I am.
Everyone else has that information from the screens on the trains,
from the signs on the trains or the stations.
And all I'm asking RailCorp to do is to tell me where I am.
I spoke to them in 2010,
and I said, "Look, the law has required you since 1992
"to provide this information to people with a print disability.
"You're still not doing it.
"You've got six months,
"and if you're not doing it regularly by that time,
"then every time I catch a train where you don't tell me where I am,
"I'm going to lodge a complaint."
I'm up to more than 70 complaints now.
36 of those complaints are currently in the Federal Court.
The matter has been heard by the Federal Court,
and the decision is pending.
I'm as confident as a lawyer can be running a court case that I'll win,
because I can't see how it could be,
when we have discrimination law in Australia,
that the provider of a service, such as a railway service,
wouldn't be expected to let everyone know where they are,
not just the people who can see the signs.
I clearly have a passion for equality and a passion for rights,
and I've developed that
as a result of the discrimination that I've experienced.