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Effective Practices for Description of Science Content within Digital Talking Books

Beyond the Text Project: Accessible Digital Media Guidelines

Captioning Solutions for Handheld Media and Mobile Devices

Educational Media | Media at Home + Work

Digital Image and Graphic Resources for Accessible Materials (DIAGRAM)

The goal of the DIAGRAM Center (Digital Image and Graphic Resources for Accessible Materials) is to impact how image and graphic content for accessible instructional materials (AIM) is produced and accessed throughout the country in order to provide students with print disabilities equal access to the general education curriculum. To accomplish this, Benetech, the WGBH National Center for Accessible Media (NCAM) and the U.S. Fund for DAISY are collaborating to identify challenges within the technologies, standards and production practices used to produce and display accessible images and graphic content within AIM, and develop technologies, tools, recommended practices and training materials that address them. This includes development and field-testing of both open source and commercial production and access technologies, including tools proposed by third-party researchers and vendors, in consultation with our advisory panel and other OSEP-funded projects.

NCAM is conducting many of the DIAGRAM Center’s research activities and, throughout the project, will be posting summary documents for public review and input, beginning in 2011. NCAM will also be offering ongoing training sessions on effective description practices for accessible-media producers and others creating materials for students with print disabilities.

Advisory Board Members


  • James Allan, Webmaster, Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired
  • American Printing House for the Blind, representative to be confirmed
  • Jim Downs, Program Manager, Georgia Instructional Materials Center
  • Lucia A. Hasty, Consultant, Tactile Graphics
  • Brad Hodges, National Technology Associate, American Federation for the Blind
  • Andrew Kirkpatrick, Group Product Manager, Accessibility, Adobe Systems
  • Jim Koopman, Graduate Student, Iowa State University
  • Brian MacDonald, President, National Braille Press
  • Helen Popper, Parent Representative, Associate Professor and Former Chair of the Department of Economics, Santa Clara University
  • James Pritchett, Manager, Technology Development, Recording for the Blind & Dyslexic
  • T. V. Raman, Research Scientist, Google Research
  • Lore Schindler, Teacher/Tech Coordinator, Visually Impaired Program Los Angeles Unified School District
  • Mike Sharpe, Project Evaluator
  • Laurie Vasquez, Assistive Technology Specialist, Santa Barbara City College
  • Ge Vue, Instructional Designer and Research Associate at CAST

In addition to the members listed above, the DIAGRAM Center will also benefit from the input of working groups in the fields of tactile graphics and math representation, convened and led by selected advisers.