Thirty-six million Americans with hearing or visual disabilities rely on WGBH for access to popular and educational media. We broke the sound barrier for deaf viewers in 1972 with the world's first television captions, and opened new doors for viewers with vision loss in 1990 with our Descriptive Video Service, providing supplemental narration of a program's visual elements. Several years ago, WGBH married the two technologies to create MoPix, a captioning and description system that enables people with sensory disabilities to enjoy first-run movies in theaters. Since then, WGBH has encouraged theater owners nationwide to adopt MoPix while simultaneously lobbying Hollywood studios to caption and describe their new releases. Our efforts are paying off. The number of movie theaters equipped with MoPix tripled in 2002, and the number of described/captioned first-run releases doubled, including many of the year's blockbusters.

"People with disabilities depend on WGBH for captions and descriptive narration of their favorite public and commercial TV programs and popular films," says Larry Goldberg, director of WGBH's Media Access Group. "Our friends in various disabilities communities tell us we're making a real difference. We work with them to make today's media more accessible, as well as to research technologies for a more accessible future."

Next: Using media to teach