NIMAS and Disability Standards

  1. The Movement to Provide Equal Education
  2. NIMAS Timeline
  3. How NIMAS Affects the Business of Education Publishing
  4. Preparing for NIMAS: Problems to Consider
  5. Why NIMAS is Great for Education Publishing

The Movement to Provide Equal Education

Since the beginning of public education in the United States, students with disabilities have had limited resources compared to non-disabled students. Over the past decade, however, emerging technologies have allowed us to make coordinated and helpful improvements in this realm. Recently, a legislation known as IDEA 2004 has leveraged these improvements to provide students with sight and reading disabilities a more equal opportunity to utilize publications that are used in public schools. The basic mandate of IDEA 2004 is that education publishers either:

  • Provide their content to the National Instructional Materials Access Center (NIMAC) in accordance with a markup standard called NIMAS (National Instructional Materials Accessibility Standard). NIMAS will be used by non-profit organizations to produce instructional materials like Braille and Digital Talking Books that students with sight and reading disabilities can use effectively; or
  • Provide their content in specialized formats that can be used by students with sight and reading disabilities.

For most publishers, it will be much easier to provide education content to NIMAC according to NIMAS than it would be to supply the specialized formats for disabled students. The latter would typically require creation of new company departments, a large financial investment, and an unrealistic capability to comply with the legislation in time.

NIMAS Timeline

NIMAS was published on July 19, 2006 with the final version published on August 14, 2006. States were required, as of December 3, 2006, to provide instructional materials to blind persons or other persons with print disabilities. States are not required to participate in the NIMAC, but those states that do not, must provide the same types of instructional materials to this student population so education publishers will see more demand now for these electronic versions of their materials.

How NIMAS Affects the Business of Education Publishing

NIMAS is going to prove who really wants to win in the business of education publishing. There are very few publishers who have preexisting facilities to produce specially formatted content for students with sight and reading disabilities. Thus, almost everyone will likely opt to provide NIMAS files to NIMAC. The enigma is that remarkably few publishers are actively preparing for NIMAS. Many are still unprepared after NIMAS has become the active standard.

It is true that not all school districts will cooperate with NIMAC in order to comply with IDEA 2004, but most will because it is actually a good solution to the problem that the legislation addresses. A couple of savvy publishers have taken advantage of this by simply preparing for NIMAS now. This will position them for solid revenue gains since most of their competition is not preparing for NIMAS. When school districts consider content from a publisher that has NIMAS files, and another that does not adequately comply with IDEA 2004, the publisher that has NIMAS files will get the sale. The difference is simple, and perhaps only temporary (as even lagging publishers will comply eventually), but still significant. Prepared publishers will not only win the short-term sale, but also the reputation of an active participant in providing equal education.

Preparing for NIMAS: Problems to Consider

The two major problems that publishers have experienced when preparing for NIMAS are:

Finding Competent Help

CAST (Center for Applied Special Technology—the organization that is responsible for NIMAS) has provided a list of companies that "indicate that they are capable of," and thus "may have expertise in," creating files that conform to NIMAS. This is a good start. However, a frequent problem that publishers experience is that many companies that "indicate" such competency do not live up to their indications. They often produce impractical files, require exorbitant damage-control from the publisher, or both.

Producing NIMAS compliant files requires both a firm understanding of data manipulation and also keen editorial decision-making. Not only do files need to properly conform to NIMAS specifications, but they also need to work properly in the final product. That is, a computer program may scan a file and recognize that it is technically valid, but at the same time the file may not operate in the way that it should in practice. This completely disrupts the learning experience of a disabled person. It is very easy for inexperienced help to produce non-working content.

Many education publishers are trying to provide NIMAS files cheaply, but have come to realize that experienced help is necessary to avoid the needless expenses of damage control: excessive project management, exorbitant error correction, unnecessary communication obstacles, and schedule delays. Publishers need to work with an experienced NIMAS provider that has a proven track record and can demonstrate their capabilities.

Compensating for Workflows that are not well-formed

Once you have established a relationship with a NIMAS provider, the state of your existing workflow almost entirely predicts the cost of NIMAS conversions. Publishers who are currently working in a well-formed environment (e.g., SGML, XML, etc.) will find the conversion process to be rather inexpensive and seamless. The more that content is tagged consistently, according to strict rules with rich granularity, the easier the conversions will be.

Publishers who are not currently working in a well-formed environment will find the conversion process a little more costly. In such a situation, the structure of content has to be manually imposed before it is potentially useful in a NIMAS format. However, this extra cost is not all bad. In reality, it can be one of the best investments that a publisher can make.

Why NIMAS is Great for Education Publishing

In effect, NIMAS is forcing all education publishers to convert their editorial and production workflows to well-formed workflows—something that everyone should have done years ago. While it is not necessary that a publisher adopt a well-formed publishing methodology, the cost to provide NIMAS files otherwise could become excessive as future titles are created. However, the benefits of a well-formed publishing methodology far exceed the costs.

A well-formed publishing methodology unifies the publishing processes through integration and consistent management. It maintains absolute consistency, utilizes technology appropriately, integrates tasks that are traditionally separated and redundant, and focuses on long-term strategies. In a well-formed document workflow, the structure of publications is imposed throughout every process—copyediting, typesetting, etc. This eliminates redundancy, ensures that content and structure are completely consistent, and offers the option to multipurpose content (e.g., create e-books, CD-ROMs, Web sites, etc.) with minimal expenses. A well-formed methodology best utilizes personnel and technology, lowers unit expenses, eliminates cost overruns, avoids delays in production, and produces enhanced content that is poised for greater sales. Publisher backlists will become dynamic, able to be inexpensively repurposed to generate revenue from emerging electronic markets. NIMAS will allow publishers to make distribution decisions based on the appropriateness of the market, not the cost to get there.