Introduction > What is the DCMP?
The Described and Captioned Media Program (DCMP), under management by the 
National Association of the Deaf (NAD), provides free-loan accessible educational media to students who are deaf or hard of hearing and also to those who are blind or visually impaired.
About the NAD—The NAD (http://www.nad.org) is the nation’s oldest and largest nonprofit organization safeguarding the accessibility and civil rights of 28 million deaf and hard of hearing Americans, and it is the administrator of the new DCMP federally funded project. The NAD is a dynamic federation of 51 state association affiliates (including the District of Columbia), organizational affiliates, and national members. Primary areas of focus include grassroots advocacy and empowerment, policy development and research, legal assistance, captioned media, information and publications, and youth leadership. |
Funded by agreements with the U.S. Department of Education (ED) that have been in effect since 1991, the DCMP has selected, captioned, and distributed open-captioned educational media in and DVD format through a nationwide library system and through Internet streaming. This program of over 4,000 free-loan educational media items has reached an annual audience of over 3 million educators, families, and other registered users. That program has now been expanded to also provide description for blind and visually impaired students.
Description is the verbal depiction of key visual elements in a television broadcast, webcast, film, video, CD-ROM, DVD, multimedia, live event, or other productions. Inserted into natural pauses in the program's soundtrack, the description provides information that otherwise would remain inaccessible to someone who is blind or visually impaired without the assistance of a sighted person. |
In addition, the DCMP provides a database of accessible media available for purchase by schools from educational media producers, as well as a clearinghouse of information and materials on the subject of accessible media for consumers, agencies, corporations, businesses, and schools. The Web-accessible clearinghouse also allows users to search informational offerings on the Web sites of major educational and consumer organizations serving blind or deaf individuals.