Description + Captioning = Access

By: Kelly Gorski

Editor: The program you may know as the Captioned Media Program (CMP) has added description services for blind people and is now known as the Described and Captioned Media Program. Here's more information.

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Many of you are very familiar with the quality media, information, and other services provided by the Captioned Media Program (CMP). Since the early '90s, the CMP has been at the forefront of captioning educational media. However, the program has been in existence much longer. Originally established as the Captioned Films for the Deaf (CFD) in 1949, which provided subtitled Hollywood films, and later as the Captioned Films and Videos program (CFV) in 1984, which provided both captioned films and cassettes, the CMP captioned multimedia such as DVDs, CD-ROMs, and eventually streamed educational media via the Internet.

The CMP is once again at the forefront of a new era in accessibility. The CMP is now the Described and Captioned Media Program (DCMP).

Why change the program name? The new name marks an era of advancement in accessibility and technology that is sparking a transformation in the services DCMP provides.

"The DCMP will not only caption educational media for deaf students but will also describe it for blind and visually impaired students," said Nancy Bloch, CEO of the National Association of the Deaf (NAD).

This evolution from the CMP to the DCMP resulted from the additional services that will be provided by the DCMP under the next five-year $7.5 million cooperative agreement that the NAD has entered into with the U. S. Department of Education (ED).

The captioned media that Bloch refers to is a library of educational media that is offered through a free-loan service to educators and families of students who are deaf or hard of hearing. With the addition of described media into this collection, the DCMP will also serve educators and families of students who are blind or have low vision.

"Both captioning and description are essential for children with special needs," added Ms. Bloch. "As educators across the nation hone their instruction ever more finely to produce the desired end-of-year outcomes, every in-class minute counts."

As media is used in classrooms more and more every day, it is crucial that all media is accessible to students who are deaf, hard of hearing, blind, visually impaired, or deaf-blind. All students deserve to have an equal opportunity to benefit and learn from what is used in the classrooms. Unfortunately, when referring to educational media, equal educational opportunity is not as easily provided as one might hope.

"Only 15% of educational videos/DVDs, 5% of educational CD-ROMs, and 1% of Internet content is captioned," said Bill Stark, director of the DCMP. "Even fewer educational media contain description," he added.

Fortunately, the DCMP's free-loan media library is filling much of this need for up-to-date educational media in all subjects and grade levels. Additionally, the DCMP will provide a database of accessible educational media available for purchase from media producers so schools may additionally identify described and captioned media to meet their needs. It really is an exciting time!

Even more exciting is the partnership between the NAD and the American Foundation for the Blind (AFB). AFB will generate guidelines for describing educational media, which will be in place by 2008. Carl Augusto, AFB president and chief executive officer, noted, "We are pleased to join the NAD in this effort to expand accessible educational media."

Such NAD-developed guidelines for captioning already exist and are a component of a clearinghouse of information and materials on the subject of accessible media for consumers, agencies, corporations, businesses, and schools. The Web-accessible clearinghouse will also serve as a gateway that will allow users to search informational offerings on the Web sites of major educational and consumer organizations serving individuals who are blind, visually impaired, deaf, hard of hearing, or deaf-blind.