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.
Joel Snyder overviews the four elements of audio description: observation, edit, language, and vocal skills. Mr. Snyder indicates that description is "…a kind of literary form, a type of poetry. Using words that are succinct, vivid and imaginative, describers try to convey the visual image to people who are blind or have low vision."
How can a blind or visually impaired person enjoy the theatre? Or movies, television, and other audiovisual productions? How can visual experiences effectively be made verbal? Gregory Frazier, founder of AudioVision, was a key figure in the early development of audio description for persons with a visual impairment. Watch this historical treasure, introduced by Margaret Hardy, and learn from Emmy Award winner Frazier, a pioneer in the field.
This listing was prepared from information provided by various description-related sources and from surveys conducted by the DCMP. While the DCMP has attempted to identify all service vendors, it apologizes for any omissions. As additional service vendors are identified, they will be included in this list. Listing of a service vendor does not constitute an endorsement by the U.S. Department of Education, the National Association of the Deaf, or the DCMP.
Working with sound as a producer, audio engineer, or voice-over artist seems like a natural fit for a professional who has vision loss.
Years ago, my wife, Esther Geiger, was driving some children to a drama class, and the kids were chattering excitedly about the movie "Toys." It takes place in a toy factory, and the film is filled with colorful images and movement gags—but not a lot of dialogue. One child in the car, who was blind, said, "Oh, I saw that. It was the most boring movie I've ever been to!" Indeed, this was well before the advent of audio description for film.
Looking around the classroom, Sarah wondered how she would meet the diverse needs of her students in teaching History. After reading their school records and talking with other teachers, she knew that four students came from families where English was a second language, but that many more lacked the background knowledge and vocabulary needed to comprehend her content; three students in the class had moderate to profound hearing loss; and one student had little vision.
Integrating described and captioned media into differentiated instruction.
Joanna Scavo, Aberdeen Broadcast Services, provides information for parents and teachers about the 2012 FCC rules for video description and captioning.
Discusses confusing research on kids' screen time
The need for inclusive learning for students with disabilities.
As educators, we are driven by local, state, and national mandates, but we really only have one goal: to be an effective teacher that positively impacts student learning. Then comes the question: How do we accomplish our goal? Well from an instructional standpoint, we develop our unit plans, curriculum maps, weekly and daily lessons, and do not forget the reading of the curriculum or standard course of study all while keeping instruction innovative in order to maintain student interest. We become deliberate and intentional about our approach to teaching through the integrated use of technology and media.
Joyce Adams, National Captioning Institute, provides additional information about the important question of color.
Emily Bell, Multimedia Manager at CaptionMax, gathered feedback from teachers who have used described educational videos in the classroom. In this short video clip, she provides six tips for getting the most from the programming. Ms. Bell presented these tips in the January 2012 VDRDC webinar "Bringing Video Description Into the 21st Century."
Margaret Hardy, a pioneer in the field of audio description, discusses Gregory Frazier's descriptive services work in San Francisco with AudioVision.
Reviews major events in the history of captioning