Many Web designers find Apple's QuickTime format an easy way to present multimedia on their sites. In 1996, NCAM developed an effective way to embed captions and audio descriptions into QuickTime^TM presentations. MCI's Corporate Community Partnership Web site was an early adopter of QuickTime captioning, which was included in nearly a dozen presentations.

Two other multimedia formats became available in 1998. One, known as SMIL (Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language), developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), is an XML-based format that assembles the appropriate information (such as video, audio, and captions) as the presentation is played, or streamed. SMIL is available for use with a limited number of players, most notably the RealNetworks G2. NCAM has created several sample accessible SMIL clips, containing both captions and audio descriptions, available at the NCAM Web site.

Another format that assembles information on the fly was developed by Microsoft. SAMI (Synchronized Accessible Media Interchange) uses HTML to add captions to multimedia. NCAM helped develop SAMI and has produced several sample captioned clips in this format.

Finally, NCAM is developing an editing tool, the Media Access Generator (MAGpie), which will make it easy to add captions and descriptions to multimedia in QuickTime, SMIL, or SAMI formats. The Media Access Generator will be available free from NCAM in the summer of 1999, and Business Partners will have access to in-depth training using this new tool. See more on MAGpie in Media Access "MAGpie: Hot New Web Tool."