Families and school personnel with at least one early learner through Grade 12 student who is deaf, hard of hearing, blind, visually impaired, or deafblind qualify for DCMP membership. Also, instructors and students of training programs for teachers, interpreters, mobility specialists, audiologists, and other professionals do qualify. High school students who are 18 or over can also register for membership.

DCMP works with media producers such as Weston Woods, Litton Entertainment, PBS Learning Media, Green Planet Films, and hundreds of others to make educational media accessible to deaf and blind students. To learn how to have your content made accessible and added to our program, contact our Educational Specialist, Jade Cox:

jcox@dcmp.org

Membership applications are reviewed by staff within 48 hours, excluding weekends and holidays. You will receive an email notice when your application is either approved or denied. In the meantime, you can view DCMP's freely available content that does not require membership.

DCMP videos can be viewed on desktop computer, laptops, tablets, and smartphones. Roku and Apple TV users can access the DCMP channel. iOS users can download the accessible DCMP app from iTunes.

There are no costs associated with any of DCMP's services.

DCMP members can create student accounts to assign media to individual students and groups. Student accounts exist only within member accounts. Students only have access to media and topics that are assigned by the member account. Details for setting up student accounts are found in our Help Center:

How to Set Up and Use Student Accounts

Post-secondary students qualify for DCMP membership if they are part of a training program for teachers, interpreters, mobility specialists, or other fields where the post-secondary student intends to work with students who are deaf, hard of hearing, blind, visually impaired, or deafblind.

Adults qualify for membership if they are a parent or school personnel of a child who is deaf, hard of hearing, blind, visually impaired or deafblind. Adults who are deaf or blind and wish to have a membership for personal use do not qualify for membership.

Numerous studies that support the use of described and captioned media in classroom are available in our Learning Center:

Research and Studies on Captioning

Research and Studies on Description

When you check out DVDs, the due date is printed on the envelope, which is about one week from the date of receipt. You may extend the due date by one week at a time for up to four weeks by logging in and going to Media History in your Account.

DCMP pays for postage. When you're ready to return the DVD, use the same envelope, which has the return postage prepaid.

Yes. As long as you have at least one qualifying student, you do qualify for membership and can use DCMP media in your classroom.

Yes. As long as you have at least one qualifying student, you do qualify for membership and can use DCMP media in your home.

Yes, those who are in training to work with deaf or blind early learners through Grade 12 students do qualify for DCMP membership.

DCMP staff generally review membership applications with 24 hours, but it can take up to 48 hours, excluding weekends and holidays.

Many of the videos do have lesson guides or other related resources. These are listed below the video under "Available Resources."

Yes! DCMP members can browse and search for videos based on state and national educational standards. DCMP uses EdGate Correlation Services to ensure that state K-12 standards are kept accurate and up-to-date. Standards include:

Occasionally, DVDs sent through USPS do not arrive at their destination or are received as damaged. If you have no received a DVD that you ordered, please consider giving it one more business day. If you still do not receive the DVD:

If you lost a DCMP DVD, pleast log in to your account and go to Media History. Find the media title that has been lost, and click "Fill Out Response Card." As you answer the questions, you will be able to report the media item as "lost."

Please send the DVD to:

Described and Captioned Media Program
1447 E. Main St.
Spartanburg, SC 29307

The U.S. Department of Education funds the DCMP through the Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP), which is part of the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services (OSERS). OSEP is dedicated to improving results for infants, toddlers, children and youth with disabilities ages birth through 21 by providing leadership and financial support to assist states and local districts.

DCMP members must reside in the United States and its territories, or be members of the U.S. military.

DCMP is fully funded by the U.S. Department of Education and administered by the National Association of the Deaf.

DCMP media have captions or description on at all times. Viewers may switch between the two by using their Language/Accessibility Settings.

Also known as "audio description" or "video description," description is an additional audio track that describes visual elements of a video for persons who are blind or visually impaired.

If you are not a DCMP member, most videos will not play. If you are a member, click the "Report a Problem" button below the video player and the details of your problem will be sent to our IT department.

If you search for a video and can't find it, it is probably not part of our media collection. However, your Language/Accessibility preferences can impact the videos you're able to find. For example, a small portion of DCMP's videos are not described; if your Accessibility settings are set to "description," then some captioned-only videos will not show up. Likewise, some videos are in Spanish but not English, and vice-versa.

DCMP has hundreds of Spanish-language videos, which you can find by choosing "Spanish" in your Language/Accessibility settings.

Although they're no longer physical paper cards, DCMP sends Response Card requests to members after media items are reviewed, in order to log how the media is used and how it specifically benefitted students who viewed the media. The information collected is required, as it helps to justify the need for the DCMP and maintains government support, which keeps DCMP a free service.

The five stars seen near the video player allows viewers to informally rate videos. The average rating is seen by how many stars are yellow, one being low, five being high. This is an opportunity to share an opinion that may be helpful to other members.

Each media item has a comments section below the video player. Comments made will appear to all visitors to that video's web page.

Currently, DCMP members must be at least 18 years of age. However, we do want kids, tweens and teens to be able to have a DCMP account with their own username and password. First an adult, such as a parent or teacher, must register for membership. Then they can create a Student Account for persons under 18 who are deaf, hard of hearing, blind, visually impaired, or deafblind.

How to Set Up and Use Student Accounts

We have captioning answers!

We invite you to peruse DCMP's Captioning Key, a guide to captioning media. If you don't find your answer there, send us an email at info@dcmp.org and we'll have our captioning experts answer your question.

We have description answers!

We invite you to peruse DCMP's Description Key, a guide to adding description to media. If you don't find your answer there, send us an email at info@dcmp.org and we'll have our description experts answer your question.

DCMP staff do not have access to member passwords, so if you've forgotten your password, go to the DCMP login page and click "Forgot my username" or "Forgot my password." You'll receive an email allowing you to reset your password.