Families and school personnel (including those in training) who have at least one student with a disability can sign up for free membership.
Standards-aligned videos with high-quality captions and audio description.
Create lessons and assign videos to managed Student Accounts.
Educator and sign language training videos for school personnel and families.
Find resources for providing equal access in the classroom, making media accessible, and maximizing your use of DCMP's free services.
DCMP's Learning Center provides hundreds of articles on topics such as remote learning, transition, blindness, ASL, topic playlists, and topics for parents.
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DCMP offers the only guidelines developed for captioning and describing educational media, used worldwide.
Learn how to apply for membership, find and view accessible media, and use DCMP’s teaching tools.
DCMP offers several online courses, including many that offer RID and ACVREP credit. Courses for students are also available.
Asynchronous, online classes for professionals working with students who are deaf, hard of hearing, blind, low vision, or deaf-blind.
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For interpreters, audio describers, parents, and educators working with students who are hard of hearing, low vision, and deaf-blind.
Modules are self-paced, online trainings designed for professionals, open to eLearners and full members.
These self-paced, online learning modules cover the topics of transition, note-taking, and learning about audio description.
DCMP can add captions, audio description, and sign language interpretation to your educational videos and E/I programming.
Captions are essential for viewers who are deaf and hard of hearing, and audio description makes visual content accessible for the blind and visually impaired.
DCMP can ensure that your content is always accessible and always available to children with disabilities through our secure streaming platforms.
DCMP partners with top creators and distributors of educational content. Take a look
The DCMP provides services designed to support and improve the academic achievement of students with disabilities. We partner with top educational and television content creators and distributors to make media accessible and available to these students.
Transition is the process all students go through as they move from a high school setting to what lies beyond. Transition programs assist students' and their parents' plan for life after high school in a proactive and coordinated way. An effective transition program provides students with the tools and the confidence to assume responsibility for their educational and employment decisions as they move into adulthood.
The ability to communicate defines us as human beings and as a society. It forms a foundation for decision making and relationship building. Communicating with deaf or hard of hearing individuals is an achievable goal, even when accommodations (e.g., interpreters) are not present. The tools available to us are considerable and limited only by our desire to communicate and our creativity. This document explains the basics of effective communications with an individual who is deaf or hard of hearing.
It often comes as a surprise to people that many individuals who are deaf or hard of hearing refer to themselves as being members of the Deaf community and ascribe to Deaf culture. These individuals view themselves as a unique cultural and linguistic minority who use sign language as their primary language. The characteristics of Deaf culture are formed out of many shared life experiences rooted in a visual world designed for communication ease. This document introduces the Deaf community and why it is important for disability service professionals.
Improved access and advancements in technology have allowed individuals who are deaf or hard of hearing, who might not have previously considered a career in the health care field, to now pursue this option. Nonetheless, barriers continue to exist, caused in part by the technical standards established by academia and training programs. Technical standards are a set of abilities and characteristics a person is required to possess in order to gain admission to an educational or training program.
Notetaking is the practice of capturing important pieces of information in a systematic way. It is not limited to the classroom. Notetaking is an important accommodation in any situation requiring learning, including job sites and internships. Effective notetaking is a skill that is acquired through training and strengthened through practice. It is an accommodation that deaf individuals rely on when they are in an environment of learning.
At the nucleus of every successful VR employment goal is a well-delineated Individual Plan for Employment (IPE), often referred to as a roadmap of services that lead to employment. By better understanding the myriad services offered by VR, an individual who is deaf or hard of hearing is better positioned to make informed and self-determined choices about their employment future.
Interpreting and speech-to-text services are commonplace accommodations for an audience comprised of several deaf individuals who rely on different communication modes (e.g., ASL, lip reading). This type of dual accommodation most often occurs at large magnet events such as conferences. Dual accommodation for an individual student in a postsecondary setting occurs less frequently but is appropriate under certain circumstances.
Self-advocacy is a lifelong endeavor and can never be learned too early or too late in life. Practicing self-advocacy is a critical element of the self-advocacy developmental process and individuals who do are better prepared to self-advocate in the future. This document explains the basics of helping students who are deaf and hard of hearing develop appropriate self-advocacy skills.
The role of the interpreter appears to be very straightforward – to effectively facilitate communication between individuals who are deaf and hard of hearing and those who are hearing. However, the complexities of the task, the varieties or types of visual interpreting, and the enormous range of qualifications brought by the interpreter make it anything but simple.
Regardless of one's role in administering an assessment – as a professor in a college course or a psychological examiner conducting an evaluation – test providers recognize the importance of obtaining an accurate measurement of student learning, knowledge, abilities, attitudes, and skills.
While visual language interpreters have gained more prominence and visibility in the classroom as a result of the passage of the American with Disabilities Act in 1990, they have been a part of the educational landscape since the early 1970s. Despite longevity in the classroom, the role and function of the interpreter is often confusing and distracting.
Researcher Judith Garman looks at whether captions and description can be beneficial for people with autism.
In December of 1979, as a project at the University of Maryland, Karen Brickett interviewed Dr. Malcolm (Mac) J. Norwood, the "Father of Closed Captioning." Dr. Norwood relates how 10% of the general population would not accept captions on their TV screens, which necessitated the development of a closed-captioning system. He discusses the postponement of decoder sales until March of 1980, estimates of the number of potential viewers of closed-captioned TV, predicts 22 to 22½ hours of captioned programs will be available by the end of 1980, discusses the development of two captioning centers on the East Coast and West Coast, and addresses other exciting developments. This 25-minute production is the only known video of Dr. Norwood. Thanks to Karen Brickett Russell for sharing this record of captioning history.
With the advent of description, people who are blind or visually impaired gained an important tool with which to broaden their understanding and enjoyment of the unique visual nature of films and other visual media. Though a relatively new phenomenon compared to captioning, which established its roots more than 60 years ago, there have been many notable developments in the history of description.
