Kestrell

Kes: I recently decided that in 2011 I am going to add more art to my life, so this is pretty exciting. The e-mail address is mary_watkins@wgbh.org

As a member of New England's cultural community and an individual who has worked to assure that your institution is as inclusive of people with disabilities as possible, you are being invited to help plan an exciting and groundbreaking event that we expect will help advance this commonly held goal.

The Carl and Ruth Shapiro Family National Center for Accessible Media at WGBH (NCAM) along with the Museum of Fine Arts has been asked by the Shapiro Family Foundation to organize an event, probably a half-day in late Spring 2011, that will be designed to serve your needs, concerns, questions and challenges as you look to welcome people with disabilities to your facility.

But what are your needs? What kind of event would work for you? Who should attend from your organization and what can we do to assure that key decision-makers are enticed to attend and get real value from the planned event? Should the seminar focus on technology? Funding? Outreach? Awareness-raising? (we suspect we know the answer to these last questions - all of the above!)

This is expected to be an "insiders" event for the museum community, perhaps to be followed eventually by additional activities that focus on and include your stakeholders. But for now, your input is needed to be sure we serve your needs.

Interested? Then join us for a planning call on Tuesday, Jan. 11, at 2pm (we'll set up a conference call with web captioning for anyone who needs it). Don't worry if you can't make the call - we'll take notes and be sure to get your feedback long before the conference agenda is set. Know anyone who you think would be interested? Let us know and we'll reach out. Simply hit reply to this email and let us know you're interested.

Thanks for considering this request - we hope you are as excited about the possibilities as we are.

Larry Goldberg
WGBH - Carl and Ruth Shapiro Family National Center for Accessible Media (NCAM)

Hannah Goodwin
Museum of Fine Arts

Posted to the NCAM announcement list

The Carl and Ruth Shapiro Family National Center for Accessible Media at WGBH (NCAM) has written guidelines for content providers who would like to create accessible iTunes U media via captions, subtitles and audio descriptions. This guidelines document provides step-by-step documentation on creating fully accessible media, including:

- Closed captions and audio descriptions that the user can turn on or off as needed.
- Open subtitles and descriptions that are available to everyone watching or listening.
- Closed subtitles for adding multiple language tracks to video files.
- Accessible PDFs.

Also included with the guidelines are links to eight video and audio clips that illustrate the various forms of accessible media discussed in the document. Using these guidelines, iTunes U content providers can create content that all people can learn from including people with vision and
hearing loss.

To access the Creating Accessible iTunes U Content guidelines document and related media, see Creating Accessible iTunes U Content on Apple's iTunes site,
<http://deimos3.apple.com/webobjects/core.woa/browse/wgbh.org.2010579900>.

About NCAM and WGBH
The Carl and Ruth Shapiro Family National Center for Accessible Media at WGBH is a research, development and advocacy entity that works to make existing and emerging technologies accessible to all audiences. NCAM is part of the Media Access Group at WGBH, which also includes The Caption Center (est. 1972), and Descriptive Video Service® (est. 1990). For more
information, visit http://access.wgbh.org.

WGBH Boston is America's preeminent public broadcasting producer, the source of fully one-third of PBS's prime-time lineup, along with some of public television's best-known lifestyle shows and children's programs and many public radio favorites. For more information, visit http://www.wgbh.org.