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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.
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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.
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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: description
Joel Snyder tells us that Audio Description (AD) provides a verbal version of the visual for the benefit of people who are blind or have low vision. Succinct descriptions precisely timed to occur only during the pauses in dialogue or significant sound elements of performing arts or in media allow persons with vision impairments to have greater access to the images integral to a given work of art. Mr. Snyder provides a brief summary of the history of description and then overviews how creating description is an art, the venues for description, skills required of a professional describer, and why description is important to literacy.
Science programs on television present much of their information only visually. For people who are visually impaired this reliance on visual cues limits access to the learning and enjoyment such programs offer. Emilie Schmeidler discusses the intent to provide visually impaired people with more access to the programs' content and to make viewing more satisfying by ensuring that people with disabilities have the same access to information and opportunities that people without disabilities do.
This paper presents an investigation into the automated analysis of audio description scripts for 91 films. The investigation reveals some idiosyncratic features of what appears to be a special language. The existence of a special language is explained in part by the fact that audio description is produced by trained professionals following established guidelines, and its idiosyncrasies are explained by considering its communicative function – in particular that it is being used to tell a story.
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 or the DCMP.
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.
Margaret Hardy, a pioneer in the field of audio description, discusses Gregory Frazier's descriptive services work in San Francisco with AudioVision.
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.
The Audio Description Tip Sheet is intended as a quick reference for describers. View the DCMP Description Key for a comprehensive and accessible reference for audio description.
Kelly Warren, owner of Mind’s Eye Audio Productions, overviews the process of describing television, film, and video. She defines good description, discusses its complexities, and looks into its future.
In May 2011, the Texas Education of Blind and Visually Impaired Students Advisory Committee offered teachers, parents, and students with visual impairments across the United States and Canada an opportunity to submit a short video on the theme, "Social Skills: Putting the ‘C’ in Cool." The contest provided a perfect opportunity to highlight a favorite lesson to teach social skills at home, school, or in the community.
Imagine that you are a blind, fourth-grade girl and that your class is watching a film that examines prejudice and bullying in our culture. The film is a drama, where young girls shoot scornful glares, roll their eyes, and whisper about a new student. Instead of aggressive bullying, they get up and leave when the new girl approaches. Now imagine that you're studying human anatomy in high school. The brilliantly colored graphics of today's film show how blood flows through the heart's ventricles and oxygen inflates the bronchioles in the lungs.
Debbie Risk discusses the Captioning Key and Description Key as valuable resources to guide companies in their work of adding captioning and description to videos and other media.
In an address on March 15, 2011, the U.S. Department of Education (ED) Secretary Duncan stated: "In order to win the future, as President Obama has challenged us, we must enable every single American to reach their potential, and in my book, all means all. Every child, regardless of income, race, background, or disability can learn and must learn."
