[Bridging_the_digital_divide] NIMAS

[bridging_the_divide at touchsmart.net]

Something rather interesting occurred on 28July04...

[excepted]

In a landmark announcement for students with sensory and other print 
disabilities, the U.S. Department of Education endorsed the National 
Instructional Materials Accessibility Standard (NIMAS), version 1.0 on 
July 27th, 2004. On behalf of Secretary Paige, Deputy Secretary of 
Education Gene Hickok discussed the new standard at an event 
commemorating the 14th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities 
Act. The event was co-sponsored by the Departments of Commerce and 
Education in Washington, D.C. The voluntary standard will 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, and other accessible formats.

ll students with print disabilities experience the same barrier - 
inaccessible materials - when core curriculum textbooks presented in 
print are the primary learning resource. Students who cannot see the 
words on a page, cannot hold a book or turn its pages, cannot decode 
the text or cannot comprehend the syntax that supports the written word 
may each experience different challenges, and they may each require 
different supports to extract meaning from information that is "book 
bound" - but the barrier for each is the same.


http://www.cast.org/ncac/index.cfm?i=3138
---

Jason Barkeloo
President
TouchSmart Publishing
http://www.touchsmart.net
t: 513.225.8765
f: 206.666.4856

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