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.
See QuickClasses
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.
Filtering by tag: educators
In 2017 fans of America’s Got Talent were shocked when Mandy Harvey took the stage and delivered an amazing vocal rendition of her original songs accompanied by her ukulele. What made her performance shocking and amazing is the fact that Mandy is deaf. She was born with hearing loss and underwent several corrective surgeries as a child then lost her remaining hearing at the age of eighteen.
You can earn Certificates of Completion and Continuing Education Credit through DCMP's eLearning modules, QuickClasses, and Online Workshops as outlined below.
Listening is Learning (“LIL” for short) is a year-round effort to raise awareness about the need for quality description—primarily description of video-based educational media—and to develop resources and new applications for description in the educational environment.
Unusual things happen when products are designed to be accessible to people with disabilities. It wasn't long after sidewalks were redesigned to accommodate wheelchair users that the benefits of curb cuts began to be realized by everyone.
In April 2009 the Described and Captioned Media Program (DCMP) solicited input from teachers of students with visual impairments (TVIs) around the U.S. in an attempt to measure the awareness of the availability of described educational video-based media (i.e., video) and to uncover trends concerning overall video usage among TVIs. An online survey was publicized by way of various e-mail lists, websites, and professional development organizations; this effort resulted in 222 unique responses, summarized in the various sections below.
This 60-minute webinar, the fourth in a series, features a live panel discussion about how YouDescribe, a tool anyone can use to add description to YouTube videos, is being used to provide access to content beyond the K-12 classroom.
This an archive video of the Video Description Research and Development Center webinar #1 - Bringing Video Description Into The 21st Century. The webinar occurred January 24, 2012. Topics in this webinar include: (1) A teachers' guide to using video description; (2) A comprehensive overview of resources for obtaining described materials; and (3) A sneak peak at the description technologies of the future being developed at the VDRDC. Presenters included Dr. Joshua Miele, Director of the VDRDC; Jim Stovall, President of Narrative TV Network; Jason Stark, Director of the Described and Captioned Media Program; Joel Snyder, Director of the Audio Description Project at the American Council of the Blind; and Emily Bell, Multimedia Manager at CaptionMax.
Dr. Tamby Allman wrote most of this article while serving as a teacher of deaf students in a kindergarten/first grade, self-contained classroom in Highland Park, Illinois. Dr. Seuss books came to her mind as she sought beginner-level books to help her students move to more fluent reading and increase their sight vocabulary. However, so much of the joy of Dr. Seuss is the use of rhymes and nonsense words, her colleagues said, and are probably not an ideal choice for readers who are deaf. That worried Tamby too, but she'd seen her students picking the books off the shelves of the library, and she knew that many of them already had Dr. Seuss books, videos, and toys at home. In other words, the books met the most important criterion for authentic texts: appeal to the children. Read about her successful experiences with these books in early reading instruction.
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.
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
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."
In June 2008 a survey was conducted of the top 35 educational media producers/distributors in the United States. Each company was asked about its products and whether they were accessible, either via captioning or description (or if both were available), whether they were familiar with either accessibility option, and how many of their customers requested either or both on the media items they intended to purchase.
Bill Stark provides ten rules for effective use of captioned and described videos, with a dose of humor.
A dissertation submitted by Aaron Steinfeld, University of Michigan, 1999. Guidelines for the developers of captioning devices were made: (1) Real-time captions (RTC) are beneficial for both deaf and hearing students; (2) Location of a RTC display (desk or podium) has no impact on recall performance; (3) RTC devices should display at least four lines of text. However, there is only theoretical support for displays of more than four lines of text; (4) Higher amounts of sentence lag seem to improve performance (up to two lines or 6 seconds). It is possible that larger levels of lag may result in decreased performance; (5) A higher rate of presentation (200 vs. 160 wpm) appears to have a negative impact on performance for deaf subjects when lag is present, and; (6) Users are reasonably good at determining their ideal device parameters given the opportunity to experience their choices. However, deaf users may perform better with lag even though their preference for it is low.
