NIMAS - Improving Access to Instructional Materials for Students with Disabilities
The U.S. Department of Education's Office of Special Education Programs has awarded CAST two five-year Cooperative Agreements to establish two national centers to further develop and implement the National Instructional Materials Accessibility Standard (NIMAS). NIMAS guides the production and electronic distribution of digital versions of textbooks and other instructional materials so they can be more easily converted to accessible formats, including Braille and text-to-speech.
Version 1.0 of the NIMAS standard was developed in 2002-2004 by the National File Format Technical Panel comprised of 40 technology specialists, educators, disability advocates, and publishers and is based on the ANSI/NISO Z39.86 (DAISY 3) specification.
The NIMAS Development Center will improve the original standard by identifying new research and technological advances relevant to the standard. The Center will also explore existing and new distribution models for the provision of accessible materials to students with disabilities.
The NIMAS Technical Assistance Center will work with key stakeholders such as states, school boards, and publishers to raise awareness of the benefits of accessible materials. It will also advise stakeholders on the efficient production and distribution of NIMAS-compliant materials.
NIMAS Fact Sheet:
- Download MS Word version of NIMAS Fact Sheet
- Download PDF version of NIMAS Fact Sheet - see the note regarding PDFs (below)
If you would like to learn more please visit the NIMAS page of CAST's website.
Note regarding PDFs: In order to view PDFs you must have Adobe Acrobat Reader installed on your computer. If you do not have this software installed, you can download Acrobat Reader for free on Adobe's web site.
