Principal Investigator
David Rose, Ed.D.
Project Director
Chuck Hitchcock
Funder
U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP)
(Grant Number: H327P040002)
Timeframe
2004-2009
Project Description
Students with sensory, physical and other print disabilities must be provided with high quality specialized formats of instructional materials in a timely manner. In recognition of this need, The National Instructional Materials Accessibility Standard (NIMAS) was endorsed by the U.S. Department of Education in July of 2004 and CAST was charged with helping to implement the national instructional materials standard file format. The standard is intended to guide the production and electronic distribution of flexible digital instructional materials such as textbooks so they can be more easily converted to Braille, text-to-speech, digital talking books, audio and other specialized formats.
The NIMAS Technical Assistance Center provides technical assistance to states, publishers and content conversion houses involved in developing and providing accessible educational materials to students with disabilities in support of the IDEA 2004 statute and regulations.
The goal of the project is to support large-scale implementation of NIMAS to improve the availability, quality, timeliness, and cost effectiveness of accessible materials for students with disabilities. The NIMAS TA Center works in cooperation with the NIMAS Development Center, and with key stakeholders to raise awareness of the benefits of accessible materials. It also advises stakeholders on the efficient production and distribution of NIMAS-compliant materials, organizes the work of a national 20-member NIMAS Implementation Advisory Council and supports the implementation and use of the National Instructional Materials Access Center (NIMAC).
The primary impact of this project will be increased access to textbooks and other materials for students with disabilities. The project anticipates that all five major educational publishers will be able to produce properly formatted source files as an alternative to print publication.
Watch a short video, with accompanying transcript, describing NIMAS: http://idea.ed.gov/explore/view/p/%2Croot%2Cdynamic%2CVideoClips%2C8%2C.
View a PPT presentation about the NIMAS TA Center.
Access additional information about the NIMAS centers.
