Photo caption: Deaf storyteller Adrian Blue presents Arthur in American Sign Language.
Can WGBH make Arthur, the award-winning and immensely popular TV show for children, even better? With funds from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, NCAM and WGBH Interactive are creating Enhanced Arthur, a demonstration of features that may be possible when DTV (digital television) becomes commonplace. The DTV prototype will be completed this summer.
Enhanced Arthur will demonstrate fun, interactive activities that kids might do while they're watching the TV show and after the show ends. NCAM is focusing on accessibility of Enhanced Arthur. In addition to the story being captioned and described, many of the interactive activities are "universally designed." This means that visual instructions will be spoken so that children who are blind or visually impaired will not need special audio description, and audio will be presented visually (through graphics or text) so that children who are deaf or hard-of-hearing will not need closed captions. Furthermore, NCAM is adding features that maximize Enhanced Arthur's literacy benefits for deaf children, such as:
- a beginning reader caption track, as an alternative to verbatim captions;
- an American Sign Language (ASL) translation of the program; and
- a glossary with words and definitions in print, ASL, and audio.
Initial research for Enhanced Arthur's literacy features and continued evaluation are carried out under NCAM's new Cornerstones grant from the U.S. Department of Education.
Media Access, Spring/Summer 1999:
The Phantom Menace Comes to NCAM | Accessible Digital TV | Enhanced Arthur 2000 | CD-ROMs, Useful for Everyone | MAGpie: Hot New Web Tool | Caption Center Links TV Viewers to the Web | MIT and Online Learning | From the Director | "Messages" at the Museum of Science
Priority Access: Serving NCAM Business Partners
NCAM Helps Prepare Business Partners for the Future | Millennium Partners | Collaborative Partnerships Increase Access | Equal Access: From the 1950s to the Future
Copyright © 1999 WGBH Educational Foundation
NCAM | WGBH Educational Foundation