CaptionMax Services Provide Universal Access to Media
The use of video in the classroom has come a long way from the clacking filmstrips and pokey slide projectors of the past. Students can now watch a space shuttle launch on the internet, play a DVD about Saturn’s moons, give a PowerPoint presentation about their bottle rocket experiment, and take a quiz about the whole topic on their laptops.
Multimedia combines images, sounds, and text in a powerful way, and video can capture children’s attention like nothing else. But many students with disabilities are being excluded from this revolution, isolated from their peers, and frustrated by the technology that is intended to help them leap forward.
Many applications use sound in novel ways to teach reading but provide no alternatives for the student who cannot hear. Animation can make math more fun, but not for students who can’t distinguish a tap-dancing “7” from a break-dancing “2.” Some DVDs even have a description track for the blind but because the controls are buried in a submenu, the viewer needs to rely on sighted friends to turn the description on.
Unless the needs of all users are taken into account, classroom video simply isn’t a high-quality learning tool. And when the “multi” in multimedia is not used to its full advantage, all students miss out on the opportunity to absorb information in the manner that is most effective for them as individual learners. DVDs and other multimedia formats, such as streaming video, iPods, and cell phones, present a rich opportunity to expand the world of video accessibility. Multimedia can mean so much more than just flashy pictures and trivia games. At its best, it allows us to deliver content to students in a variety of ways, overcoming limitations for students with sensory, learning, and cognitive disabilities.
That's why CaptionMax developed the Universal Access to Media (UAM) program: to explore new and better ways to make media accessible. And just as curb cuts have proven to have value beyond enabling wheelchair users to cross streets, improving how captions and descriptions work could benefit a wide range of learners with diverse learning styles.
The UAM program started with the DVD format, since DVD is a flexible, powerful, and most importantly, common method of video distribution. Players are relatively inexpensive and widely available, ensuring that most classrooms should be able to use the product. Now some UAM titles are being streamed over the internet directly into classrooms, which is extremely convenient but can require a slightly higher level of technical skill from the user. If you're a teacher or parent who is new to streaming video, DCMP is a great place to start (and provides step-by-step instructions about how to access streaming video content), since most of the UAM titles are available in this format.
UAM Program Features
- Captions
- The captions on UAM DVDs will work on all standard DVD players—set-top boxes, Blu-ray players, laptop and desktop computers, even electronic blackboards—because they are simple to activate by pressing a button on the DVD menu and don’t require a CC decoder. In addition to the dialogue, the captions convey key information such as sound effects, speaker identification, and other auditory cues.
- Description
- A supplemental audio stream features both the program audio as well as concise, unobtrusive narration providing information about the program’s most important visual content during breaks in the dialogue.
- Spoken menus
- Titles and button text are spoken aloud as they are highlighted. As soon as the DVD plays, spoken menus are automatically turned on to ensure ease of use, though they can be turned off if the user chooses not to use accessibility features.
- Clean, simple menu design
- Unlike many commercial DVD designers, CaptionMax’s graphic artists focus on usability rather than gimmicks, designing menus with easy-to-follow navigation trails, clear and obvious button highlights, and large, high-contrast text.
- Simple navigation
- The DVD authors design every menu to ensure that the user can easily navigate using only two keys on either a keyboard or remote control: the down arrow and the selection key. For users watching on their computers, as long as the DVD player software supports keyboard navigation, use of a mouse is not required.
In addition, some UAM programs may also have the following features:
- Expanded description
- This feature allows time for additional description of important on-screen information by momentarily “freezing” the video while the narrator provides more extensive detail. This is particularly useful when there is not enough time in between the dialogue to adequately describe complex visuals such as a biology specimen or a detailed math problem.
- Caption choices
- Some titles, especially those aimed at a younger audience, allow users to choose to watch complete, unedited captions or captions that have been simplified for easier reading. Other titles allow users to select different styles of lettering and text colors.
- Captioned description
- The describer’s narration is captioned in italics at the upper left of the screen. This may be useful to students with learning disabilities as well as those who have both hearing loss and low vision.
- Described slideshows
- A series of still images, each with extensive description that’s read aloud.
- Study guides
- Certain programs contain DVD-ROM content such as teacher guides or study questions. These are usually in PDF format with text descriptions of the images and tags for better compatibility with screen readers. This content can be accessed only when the DVD is played in a computer.
- Annotations
- When a word or phrase in the dialogue is highlighted in the captions (Photo 1, below) and signified by a beep or chime sound in the audio track, the user can click the keyboard or remote to see and hear a dictionary definition of the key term (Photo 2) or relevant supplemental information, such as a described and labeled illustration (Photo 3) or animated concept map. Clicking again will return the user to the main program.
There’s a regularly updated list of all UAM programs on CaptionMax’s website, and DCMP provides a list of UAM programs available through the DCMP free-loan media collection, with the newest titles listed first. UAM titles are also included in the DCMP catalog, and searchable via DCMP’s built-in Google search tool. As with the other media in the DCMP collection, only Level 2 members may borrow these titles, so if you qualify, register for your Level 2 DCMP membership today!
Please check out one of these programs and try out the advanced accessibility features for yourself, then fill out a DCMP response form and let us know what you think.
The UAM program is funded by two grants from the U.S. Department of Education: H327C060013 and H327C060014.