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Media Accessibility Information, Guidelines and Research
About RCAA
The DCMP’s RCAA celebration was launched in 2006 after partnering with the NEA’s Read Across America event. RCAA is the first national reading event to put emphasis on the importance of captioned media (e.g., broadcast, internet, DVD, CD-ROM) as a reading tool for all children, not just those who are deaf or hard of hearing. This effort resulted in a huge success, as thousands of students have participated in this event since its inauguration.
Video: Captions Help Children Learn to Read.
The DCMP supports the efforts of the NEA’s Read Across America by:
- Providing free-loan educational captioned media to registered users (teachers, families, and others who work with deaf or hard of hearing children).
- Acting as a captioning information center to provide answers to anyone’s questions concerning captioned media.
- Maintaining a database for locating educational captioned media available for purchase.
- Assisting requesters (media producers, school personnel, and others) in learning to caption or in locating an expert to perform captioning.
- Supporting efforts by parents and educators to increase the availability of educational captioned media.
- Providing flyers, posters, bookmarks, and other free materials to remind everyone of the importance of reading captions.
About the Described and Captioned Media Program
The Described and Captioned Media Program (DCMP) provides services designed to support and improve the academic achievement of students who are blind, visually impaired, deaf, hard of hearing, and deaf-blind. These services include (1) a library of free-loan described and captioned educational media, (2) a learning center of information related to educational media access, (3) a gateway to Internet resources related to accessibility, and (4) guidelines for adding descriptions and captions to media. There are no user registration or service fees. The DCMP is funded by the U.S. Department of Education and administered by the National Association of the Deaf.
About the NEA’s Read Across America
NEA’s Read Across America is an annual reading motivation and awareness program that calls for every child in every community to celebrate reading on March 2, the birthday of beloved children’s author Dr. Seuss.
NEA’s Read Across America also provides NEA members, parents, caregivers, and children the resources and activities they need to keep reading on the calendar 365 days a year.
In cities and towns across the nation, teachers, teenagers, librarians, politicians, actors, athletes, parents, grandparents, and others develop NEA’s Read Across America activities to bring reading excitement to children of all ages. Governors, mayors, and other elected officials recognize the role reading plays in their communities with proclamations and floor statements. Athletes and actors issue reading challenges to young readers. And teachers and principals seem to be more than happy to dye their hair green or be duct-taped to a wall if it boosts their students’ reading.
