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Standards-aligned videos with high-quality captions and audio description.
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DCMP offers the only guidelines developed for captioning and describing educational media, used worldwide.
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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.
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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.
Filtering by tag: captioning
As you might guess, we get a lot of kidding about our name, "Caption Perfect." Admittedly, we've never been perfect and don't really expect to be, but our goal is to make our captions the equivalent quality to that found in the publishing world. We want to continuously improve the quality of our work, and we want clients who expect the same. Of all our clients, the National Association of the Deaf's Described and Captioned Media Program (DCMP) has held us and its other vendors to the most exacting standard, and this demand has improved the quality of all of our work. We generally follow a series of steps to make our captions the best they can be, and below is a description of the process we use for the DCMP.
The evolution of captioning techniques
These guidelines list DCMP captioning specifications and requirements.
Captions (sometimes called “subtitles”) are the textual representation of a video's soundtrack. They are critical for viewers who are deaf or hard of hearing, and they are also a great tool for improving the reading and listening skills of others. Unlike subtitles, captions provide information such as sound effects and speaker identification.
These guidelines pertain exclusively to off-line roll-up closed captioning, as distinct from other styles of off-line closed captioning. Written by the CBC, they are intended to supplement those guidelines set forth in "The CAC Captioning Style Guide: General Guidelines for Off line Pop On Captions," which should be taken as the authoritative reference in the event of any omission from the present document.
Larry Goldberg, the Director of Media Access for WGBH in Boston, delivers a testimony to Congressional members of the ''Twenty-first Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2007'' subcommittee regarding the efforts undertaken by WGBH and NCAM to ensure accessibility in the digital age. Topics covered include the following: a brief history of captioning and audio description, some of the accessibility challenges faced by producers in moving their content to the Internet, the development and goals of the Internet Captioning Forum, and the need for standardization of captioning formats for the Web.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) rules impose obligations on broadcasters for captioning of digital television (DTV) programs, but there has been some uncertainty over exactly what is required. This paper sets out the main requirements defined by the FCC rules, summarizes what broadcasters should be doing to meet those requirements, and provides guidance on implementing the various links in the chain from caption creation through to emission. A method for transport of DTV closed captions is described using data services in the vertical ancillary data space of serial digital video signals, and several methods for feeding caption data to the ATSC encoder are identified.
In the March 2008 issue of the Clarke School's "Mainstream News," Information Outreach Specialist Melissa Griswold makes the case for captions in the classroom. In encouraging teachers to adopt captioned media early and often in their students' academic careers, Melissa references the varied and proven literacy benefits of captioning, directs readers to programs such as the DCMP, and includes useful tips for teachers and parents. (Reprinted with permission.)
The following statements are teachers' testimonials of utilizing captioned educational media from the Described and Captioned Media Program (DCMP). Each teacher relates their experience using captioned media as a teaching tool in the classroom and why this accessible media is important in the education of students who are deaf or hard of hearing.
[Editor's note: This article was written in 2004 and has since been archived. Some content may be outdated.]
[Editor's note: Ms. McCann wrote this article in 2002. For a recent biography of the author, please refer to the end of this post.]
Captioning is a vitally important way of making information available to people with a hearing loss. Another method of providing access that can also be used with captioning is assistive listening technology.
This national survey conducted by Frank G. Bowe and Aviele Kaufman in 2002 focuses on 359 special educators from 45 states found that most perceive value in captioned media for some special education students, notably those who are English Language Learners and those classified as having specific learning disabilities. Results suggest that captioning technologies be explored in more depth, particularly since they are available to classroom teachers at the touch of a button.
Written by Carl Jensema and Michele Rovins. This paper states, "There are more than 500,000 words in the English language, but a person who masters the use of 250 words . . . will recognize more than two-thirds of all words shown in television captions." For people with limited reading skills, this is a great advantage. The list was created by taking scripts from the various television programs utilized in the study and combining them. Such words include: "the," "before," "around," "please," "yeah," and many others. The table showing the complete list of words is located on the last page of the article.
Written by Carl Jensema in 1997. Objectives of this report were to (1) establish an advisory board, (2) establish a measurement system, (3) obtain and analyze off-air data, (4) develop video materials, (5) obtain and analyze child data, (6) obtain and analyze adult data, (7) compose the final report, (8) disseminate findings, and (9) submit all monthly reports, as well as the final report. Appendix includes three journal articles produced by the project, including: "Presentation Speed and Vocabulary in Closed-Captioned Television" (1995), "Closed-Caption Television Presentation Speed and Vocabulary" (1996), and "Viewer Reaction to Different Captioned Television Speeds" (1997).
