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Standards-aligned videos with high-quality captions and audio description.
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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 ED funds a Media Center grant to provide accessible, educational media to children with disabilities, as well as three Television Access grants. Grants are managed by the Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP).
DCMP creates and streams accessible educational media to serve 7.5 million students, develops new technologies, and more through this ED grant. This includes the creation of high-quality captioning, audio description, and American Sign Language interpretation.
These grants support projects that add audio description and sign language interpretation to broadcast content. Bridge Multimedia, Dicapta, and DCMP operate OSEP-funded projects that develop high-quality audio description and ASL which align with educational standards to aid learning.
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.
When Carter G. Woodson created the observance of "Negro History Week," which later became "Black History Month," he inspired African Americans to protect and uphold their history, which not only includes written history, but also oral history and the preservation of special and unique artifacts. Our history is our genesis, our present, and our path to the future. It explains how we came to be, who we are, where we are today, and where we are going tomorrow.
Original text of Public Law 85-905, the public law that originally established Captioned Films for the Deaf. Also known as the Captioned Films Act of 1958.
I am the mother of three children: a college freshman (Kyle) who is profoundly deaf, a teen-aged daughter (Megan) with sloping mild to profound hearing loss, and a hearing son (Keegan) who is finishing the second grade. My parental journey through an inaccessible world—and all the steps therein—began 14 years ago when my nearly five-year-old son was identified as having a hearing loss, was emboldened when Megan was diagnosed with a hearing loss, and continues today, step by step, learning experience by learning experience.
If you're the movie-watching type, you know that you get to enjoy great films the way they were meant to be enjoyed: on the big screen. Watching a movie in a theater allows you to enjoy technically illustrative audio and be mesmerized by bigger-than-life visuals. It allows you to fully empathize with the characters, lose yourself in the dialogue, and fully engage with and follow the plot. But what if you couldn't see? You couldn't be mesmerized by these visuals. You wouldn't be able to empathize with the characters as well if you couldn't decipher what they looked like, especially if a character has a particularly important feature used to identify and differentiate him/her from others. Could you differentiate between voices? Would you be able to follow the plot as well as if you had sight?
Part I of a captioning manual prepared for teachers at summer workshops sponsored by the Captioned Films/Videos Program. This section includes general guidelines and an explanation of captioning levels.
Part II of a captioning manual prepared for teachers at summer workshops sponsored by the Captioned Films/Videos Program. This section includes general guidelines and an explanation of captioning levels.
Part III of a captioning manual prepared for teachers at summer workshops sponsored by the Captioned Films/Videos Program. This section includes general guidelines and an explanation of captioning levels.
The forward to the first bound volume (1968) of educational Captioned Films for the Deaf lesson guides and a sample guide for the educational film The Adventures of Willie Skunk. Explains that lesson guides are prepared for "…teachers of the deaf for use in conjunction with captioned films and is intended to help avoid pitfalls inherent in the use of films as teaching tools." Each guide contained these sections or components: film summary, purpose of film, preparation for film (teacher and student), follow-up, and additional resource materials.
Paper written and prepared by the Special Office for Materials Distribution, Indiana University, in 1977. Provides a brief history of Captioned Films for the Deaf (CFD) and a description of roles of various agencies administering components of the CFD program. Includes a flow chart of the hierarchical relationships of agencies within the Bureau of Education for the Handicapped (BEH), Division of Media Services.
Written by Edmund Burke Boatner, and published by the American Annals for the Deaf in 1980, this article reviews the origin of captioning and the pioneers who resolved to create a mode of communication by which deaf audiences could enjoy films. The perseverance of many of these diligent people eventually led to the creation of Captioned Films for the Deaf. Mentions other supporters, such as the Junior League of Hartford and RKO. To quote Mr. Boatner: "No man ever won a football game alone. It was our team that won, and it was a great victory." Also includes a letter of congratulations to Mr. Boatner from then-President Dwight Eisenhower after the passage of the Captioned Film Act (Public Law 85-905) in 1958. This act provided federal funding for captioning feature films.
For many years, the only source of educational captioned media was the Captioned Films for the Deaf program. Captions were written by teachers at summer workshops, of two or more weeks duration, which were usually held on the campus of a residential school for the deaf. This 1977 paper provided guidelines to caption writers as to caption length and vocabulary (language was often heavily edited). For each film, it was determined which of three levels of captioning would be followed, ranging from very simple sentence patterns with no compound sentences to those with complex sentences.
Pioneers of captioning
This paper was given at the twenty-second Meeting of the Conferences of Executives of American Schools for the Deaf in Colorado Springs, Colorado, October, 1950 by Edmund Boatner, one of the original founders of the Captioned Films for the Deaf program. This article originally appeared in the American Annals of the Deaf, Vol. 96 No. 3, pages 346-352. It has been re-typed in its entirety for historical and archival purposes.
Following is an excerpt from Mr. Anthony's obituary, written by then American School for the Deaf Superintendent Dr. Edmund B. Boatner in the school magazine, the "American Era":
Gary E. Wait describes the American School for the Deaf museum’s collection of essays and letters reflecting the social and cultural life of the Deaf community, as well as documentation related to the origin of Captioned Films for the Deaf.
