Cyndi: Welcome, this is Cyndi Rowland, a technology director of the National Center on Disability and Access to Education. And I would like to welcome everyone to today’s special web cast on NIMAS, What you need to know now. With me today, I have three fabulous panelists that will be having conversations about NIMAS and what this means for you. So let me just start off by introducing them, then we’ll go to that conversation, and then we will respond to questions that come in from you as listeners. I would like to remind any of you, you can submit questions at any time. And in about a half an hour or 40 minutes, we’ll start reviewing those questions and answering what comes in. Let’s start with the introductions. With us today we have Chuck Hitchcock. Now Chuck is the chief officer of policy and technology for CAST. And many of you know that CAST is the Center for Applied Special Technology. Chuck, he oversees CAST’s public policy initiatives and their technology innovations programs. Chuck is also the director of a US Department of Ed project that is focusing on the NIMAS technical assistance center. Chuck, you’ve been really with NIMAS since its inception haven’t you?
Chuck: Yes, although the instructional materials accessibility act. Jessica was probably involved in that even before I was.
Cyndi: There you go, which is a perfect segway to Jessica Brodey, another panelist. And Jessica is an attorney and a public policy advocate. She has participated in many technology and disability arenas. For example, she worked with the team coalition, and that is Technology Education and Accessible Media. Jessica also provides policy analysis and strategic advice regarding the NIMAS to their technical assistance center at CAST. So, Jessica I know that you end up working with Chuck on this all the time, don’t you?
Jessica: Absolutely, and Chuck and I, when Chuck first got involved in this, we were working together at that point as well.
Cyndi: That’s great. We also, as our third panelist. I am pleased to have a Catherine Benitz, a colleague at Utah State University. Catherine is a program special at the Mountain Plains Regional Resource Center. The regional resource center is part of the federal system of regional resource center. The mountain plains center serves a ten state region, and the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Catherine has spent her entire professional career in Special Education and in training and technical assistance. Inasmuch as the RRC system provides assistance to state offices of education, and we figured that there would be a lot of folks within state offices of ed on this webcast. We though she’d be really great to have on the webcast to provide the thought of maybe someone that’s new or naïve to this topic. Do we have this about right? That’s your role. I put you on the hot seat here.
Catherine: That’s just fine. This is a subject that’s new to me and is a new subject to many other people we are working within the states.
Cyndi: Good, so we’ve got two experts here, both Jessica and Chuck and then Catherine and I are going to volley a whole lot of questions to both of you. Then we’ll take, like I said, questions that are coming in from folks that are listening at this time. I do want to remind you to send in your question at any point and time, by going to www.ncdae.org follow the links on the webcast page, of course you’d have to be there by now, wouldn’t you, and submit a question. Jessica we’re going to get this started, and the very first question is going to be tossed your way. Many people know that NIMAS stands for National Instructional Materials Accessibility Standard and that’s a new provision within IDEA 2004, but can you describe for folks that may not know what it is, what is NIMAS and what does it mean?
Jessica: Sure, absolutely. The National Instructional Materials Accessibility Standard is the name given to the digital format that we’re going to be using for converting files into accessible formats for students. And in plain English, the language in the acts says that in future contracts, schools and districts and those that are buying new textbook need to ask publishers to deliver these files in these National Instructional Materials Accessibility Standard, and the way that this standard works is its basically a text standard. It’s in XML and there are all these little tags that are built into the text that allow us to do other things and convert the text in to other things. It’s really a way to make it easer, instead of scanning books into the computer, then mark it up and do all these fussy things. It’s a way to expedite that process, to help students get Braille, to help students get digital talking books, to help students get audio, synthesized audio. To help students get large print.
Cyndi: Let me ask as you are describing it. You are describing a system for solving a problem that maybe some of the listeners might not be aware of. Chuck or Jessica you can speak to this. But, why was it necessary to have a national standard? What was the problem that was bubbling up for which NIMAS hopes to be a solution with this XML based file?
Jessica: Well, I can speak for the first part of this, if you want to grab this instead.
Chuck: Well I was going to suggest we share this, so why don’t you go ahead.
Jessica: I would say that the background really stems from the braille community, initially - particularly with Braille books. It takes a very, very long time to transform a print material into Braille. And that’s just one of the places that where we are having a problem. Students were getting access to that material. So, what started to happen was all the states started to pass what we like to call Braille laws. They are laws that require publishers to give digital files and all different formats on a state by state basis to help make it easier to get Braille books to students who are blind and low vision. For publishers this is a big huge burden, not because they had to give the digital files, but because what they had to send to Utah was different than what they had to send to California, and that was different from what they sent Texas or Maryland and that became a huge burden on the publishers that they were doing 50 different things for all the different states. What the publishers reached out and did was talk to the communities, particularly the blind low vision communities and said this isn’t working for us, what can do to make it more uniform, so that it works for everybody? And the process was coming up with a standard to make it easier to take and convert the print instructional materials into accessible formats like Braille.
Cyndi: Okay, so…
Chuck: Another driver Cyndi comes from the user perspective, where kids in some cases waited from Braille until perhaps May in the school year, where their peers had their textbooks in September.
Cyndi: Oh my heavens.
Chuck: That’s a very concrete problem that needed to be solved. However, it applies to a fairly small but critical population. In addition to that, there are others students who needed digital books, large print and various other versions, even tactile graphics that also had to wait a very long time to receive the materials they needed. So there was not an equivalent of supports to equal opportunity to learn because the material that they other kids had was not available for kids in inclusive environments.
Cyndi: So really at the end of the day what we’re talking about is that for students who needed an alternate format, they really, because of the great lags, great delays, they could not participate in the general education curriculum, in the way that is guaranteed under IDEA.
Chuck: And that is where CAST first got involved in this. We had funded the National center and accessing the general curriculum, and works with the department of education with this cooperative agreement to work on NIMAS under that umbrella.
Cyndi: Okay, wow. Chuck can you talk a little bit more about how NIMAS was developed. I do remember hearing that it stemmed from the national file format work and how long has this been bubbling up?
Chuck: It wasn’t stemmed from. It actually probably could be fair to the work of the AFB the American Foundations for the Blind, and to other organizations perhaps for the member that worked with them on the IMAA. A lot of thinking had already gone into solving the technical problems, and process problems, what would need to be in statue, even before I came involved as far as my work under the umbrella of the national center. And so I do want to give those folks a lot of credit for making it easier once the department made it easier to fund for setting up the national file format panel to move the work of the establishing the standard forward, and so what we did was back in 2002, we began bringing together a panel of almost 40 experts representing publishers, disability experts, advocates, parents, various categories of disabilities and the American Association of Publishers and attorneys who had a great interest in intellectual property rights. We brought all those folks together for a series of 3 meeting, and some number of telephone conferences to agree on a source file specification and then the way that these files would be organized by a publisher, then delivered to a national repository.
It was general consensus that we didn’t want to invent his from the ground up. We wanted to attach to an international standard that was already robust and therefore we connected with the DAISY, the International Daisy consortium, and the standard that they had already established. So what the groups did to agree on a subset of element of the DAISY standard that would comprise the NIMAS standard as well, and the publishers agreed to that. There is general agreement now that the publishers will provide that along with additional files including images, PDF files, and a package file in that in some cases publishers will actually provide the full voluntarily DAISY mark-up which NIMAS with all the additional elements. That together makes up a full DAISY.
Cyndi: Yeah. Well, and any one that has worked on any legislative efforts they can appreciate how long it’s taken this kind of thing to materialize into law. I could keep chattering with both of you, but I need to let Catherine get a word in edgewise, she has a question for one of you.
Catherine: Well, I understand that NIMAS is introduced in the IDEA 2004 amendments, can either of you summarize those NIMAS provisions as they are in the law.
Jessica: Sure, Chuck do you want me to take this one?
Chuck: Yeah, either one of us can do that this, but go ahead Jessica
Jessica: The first provision relates to, it says there is going to be a National Instructional Materials Accessibly Standard and it directs the states, it says it going published in the federal register, and it states to adopt this standard. It doesn’t say when, it just says in a timely manner after it’s been published, so it’s not specific. The second thing that it does is that it gives states and local educations agencies to opt in to coordinating with a national instructional media accessibility center, which is also defined in the law. Then on top of that if they decide by sending materials to the repository it says that in future contracts they have to ask the publishers to use the standard and send those files to the repository. That’s kind of the key ingredients. There are also some copyright amendments and changes in there that relate to the publishers and how this is going to work and the protections they get.
Chuck: Yeah. Let me share just a couple of those. The copyright one is really important. A publisher can transfer to the NIMAC, the National Repository of the American Printing House for the Blind any files, any electronic files, including we believe the images. As long as they own the print rights to that content. However, there is a bit of a gotcha, where some state or local education agency might decided that it wants to continue to do this works themselves. That copyright protection for the publishers is not provided. So publishers could rightly say we could only give you the things that we own the electronic rights for and the statute solves that problem by allowing the transfer of that content from the publisher over to the NIMAC without infringement of copyright.
The other part of the statute that I think this is important, a couple of things, all the stuff that Jessica just talked about that applies to the states also applies to local education agencies. So they are going to have to provide an assurance to the state in the same way that the states are assuring the federal government the department of education that they adopt NIMAS and secondly that they or opt out. And I am working in a sample letter for that now, that will go out to all the state directors and they will have a chance to customize that.
The last component is the establishment of the national repository itself at the American Printing House of the Blind. They’ll have a responsibility by statue to establish a center. They are pretty far along already. They are already contracted with an organization that has the capacity to host all this and to validate files as they’re received. All of that is in the works. They’ll maintain a catalog and access to those materials by authorized users. That’s the language they are using right now. Some might think of them as authorized entities perhaps. There is still some work to do in that area. And finally they will develop procedures about how the center will be used, in coordination with an advisory council that has already been formulated. Then finally protect against copyright infringement to insure the people who have access to those file use them in a proper way.
Jessica: You know Chuck just raised an interesting point. He was talking about needed to provide insure and to the state, and what that really stems from is the way the statute was written. This was setup is that the federal government will make states comply with this law is by making it a condition of eligibility to receive any IDEA funds at all. For those of you have applied for funds might already know, in order to get funds from the federal government under IDEA, you have to fill out a whole series of forms to apply, and one of this you have to stay is, I think its 24 or 25 conditions for eligibility and here they are. We provide a free and appropriate public education
We do all these other things. One of these conditions has to do with the fact that you’ve adopted with NIMAS, opting in and opting out, and are going to provide these accessible materials to your students. And that is the little hook in all this, and if you don’t figure out a way to meet the requirements of this law, then your state becomes ineligible to receive any IDEA funds at all. There is multiple ways to meet those requirements, but you have to do one of those things.
Chuck: And OSEP just one little final piece on this, OSEP is informing states that a timely manner in regards to adopting NIMAS would be at the very latest by December 3, 2006 - the same date in which the NIMAC becomes operational. The second point I want to make about this is that I can’t imagine that any state would decide not to adopt NIMAS - it’s actually a requirement of the statute and a regulation to be released but the other part of this is the opting in and opting out, anyone who opts in is not prevented from actually using or continuing the systems they already have in place, we think that over time all of this will merge into a national system that will work well for anyone, but no state is being told that whatever statue you have put in place is not replaced by this national approach. So there is an opportunity to opt in and still do what makes sense at a local level, like what’s working in California, for example or in Texas and they have systems that are working quite well, and I see them sort of connecting or merging or using the resources of the NIMAC or these files make what they already do work a little better. Now to opt out means that a local state school system assume all the responsibility for ensuring receive that kids with print disabilities received the files they need in a timely fashion, and that they are of a quality necessary to participate in the classroom. And that is a huge burden for many states that will actually benefit at a national approach to this.
Catherine: So, if a state opts out of coordinating with the NIMAC is that the end of the states responsibilities related to accessible student ready material?
Jessica: No, not at all, in fact the statute and the regulations both clearly state that nothing relieves you of the burden to provide accessible materials. As Chuck just said is that the responsibility falls squarely on the state and they do not get any outside help. Opting into the repository means that you can leverage the work that is being done by all the other states who are sending materials to the repository. So you may only order 2 or 3 books that is part of your core instructional and perhaps your teacher in school districts that are not core instructional material that you could be ordering, but not part of your core instructional curriculum. But there is some supplemental some optional materials like to include, use 2 text books. It could be that maybe Texas uses that same textbook and they have a copy that’s been deposited into the repository and your state, because you’ve opted in could access a copy of that other book. With out doing anything else except request it, because you are part of the whole system. There is this aggregate benefit, you get access to everyone else things, when they opt in. So, the more people that opt in, the more benefits there is to the entire system. And the more people and places and states, books and materials you have to leverage in your own state or LEA.
Catherine: It may be hard to get to all of those who purchased core instructional materials especially at the local level, so what would happen if some district doesn’t use the system and there is perhaps a complaint.
Chuck: They would be legally responsible for ensuring that the student receives those materials. Now, in two different ways, one by statute under IDEA 2004, and its associated regulation, yet to be finalized, but we’re quite sure that language will remain. And secondly under utilized provision in Section 504 basically in the civil rights, which is the, as you know Cyndi, would status all of this work at the post secondary lever as yet to be applied to the K12 education. But we think that if there is any intentional lag by an SEA or LEA with regard to delivering these materials that that’s where we’re going to see some action.
Jessica: There is another risk in addition to that. As I mentioned before, this is a condition of eligibility for IDEA funds, if a state or district chooses not to opt in, and they’re later accused of falling short of the mark to provide things in an accessible way, and not getting those accessible materials in a timely manner. They might be at risk for some kind of penalty or termination of their IDEA funds that come down. Because there is two funds, LEA up to a district level up to the state. The state could terminate the spreading downwards of money, because they could be in trouble that one of their little districts in not complying to the rules. Another problem is that in theory the government could cut off or reduce IDEA funds to the state. In reality it’s never happened up until now, it doesn’t mean that if couldn’t if there is widespread complaints and problems in one particular area. That very well may happen that a state who is good at enforcing and following up might just say to the smaller district you’re not complying you’re not getting any funds, you caused us to be sued. We’re really unhappy with you.
Cyndi: One of the things that I am hearing you say Jessica is going to be a little bit different in this provision is that the states are going to have to work hard to get this information of whether they’ve opted in or opted out of the NIMAC down to those local district down to those local districts in a very aggressive way.
Jessica: Yes and no, on one hand the states can’t opt in or out for the LEA. This is a separate decision, you could have state that chooses to opt in and LEA’S that choose to opt out or vise versa. It is a separate legal responsibility for every state and for every LEA, to determine whether you are opting in.
Chuck: That part is very confusing and will be to the states and that’s why we’re trying to prepare a document that will explain some of that and why it’s beneficial for LEAs to opt in the same way as we’ve advised SEAs or states to opt in. But one step further Cyndi, didn’t we also have the complications that are text book adoption states and those that are open territory states and they too operate very differently in that you would expect at a state level during an adoption process, the state would make the contract with the publisher to provide those files to the NIMAC where in an open territory state, that has to be done on every purchase order or contract between the local school district and the publisher. That puts a lot of power in the hands of the LEA to actually determine what is a textbook or core instructional print material in our district.
Cyndi: Wow that’s….it sounds to me that that letter you are constructing is going to be very important and helpful as it gets out to the state folks, my.
Chuck: Yeah, it sounds much better than it will be when I finish it, I’m sure.
Cyndi: I want to back just up a little bit. I feel that maybe we’ve got a couple of pieces of foundation that are still missing. Chuck, let me toss this your way. When we’re talking about core instruction materials or learning materials that are covered by NIMAS, what are we talking about? Are we just talking about textbooks?
Chuck: Good question, but you’re going to get me in trouble too, but I am going to go ahead and answer it anyways.
Cyndi: Or, try, and we realize that the final regs aren’t out yet, so some of this you might not be able to speak to it.
Chuck: I’d be very surprised if this topic was clarified. I think it will be clarified in practice. What I mean by that is, it will evolve over time. But, I think we can assume right now that first of all the very minimum we’re talking about textbooks in all the critical areas of education, for which there are standards for example, and all the associated print material, like black light masters, workbooks and various other worksheets that might be affiliated with that product. I know that by talking to some of the large K12 textbook publishers, that those materials are expensive, there are a lot of associated products associated with those textbooks. So, first of all there is that. Then you have to ask. Well, what if a particular district actually doesn’t use a textbook as a core instructional material for a course, but uses something else instead. Would that the be consider the equivalent of a textbook, and would the things associated with that be equivalent to a text book? And most of the publishers have said to me, is that the LEA, the local school district will make that decision when they order materials and determine whether something should delivered therefore as a NIMAS file sent to the national repository, and that’s probably about as much as we dare say at this point about what would be included. But certainly anything by the student my interpretation is that anything required by the student to participate with others in the achievement of standards is critical.
Cyndi: And certainly while you are talking, what comes to my mind is the notion that as states are planning, and you said this earlier, it doesn’t change an obligation to ensure equal access to education for all of their students. If they are planning with the NIMAC in mind and NIMAS in mind, in a way they are front loading their accessibility and if less of their materials are going to have to be modified or made accessible on the back end, under their responsibility it actually provides an incentive to include more materials, I would think.
Chuck: You know the other incentive is, they can not get all the materials they need from the existing services, whether they are instructional resource centers, or the authorized entities, that serve kids who are blind, low vision, learning disabled in some cases. And because of that, many school districts do their own scanning they have their own scanning services, they pay for services or they have volunteers, and what a waste of effort to have a thousand different school districts scanning the same materials at the same time, and this is going to help solve this problem.
Cyndi: Good, you know you just started talking about something I would like you to elaborate on Chuck, those student populations that you would expect to. Certainly there are the blind, what are the other student populations?
Chuck: This is two times you are going to get me in trouble.
Cyndi: Uh oh.
Chuck: So, you need to ask both Jessica and I this question.
Cyndi: Okay.
Jessica: Why, I should be in trouble too?
Chuck: No, because Jessica will probably give us a stricter legal interpretation than I will. If you read the statute carefully, it points back to the 1930’s statute designed to serve blind, low vision, physically challenged - updated later, there are connections to the Chaffee amendment and when you read all of that, it looks like it’s mostly blind, low vision. I could imagine that if I were an attorney in court that I would argue that we didn’t know about learning disabilities back then.
Those kids have also experience significant denial of service by not having those accessible materials, and therefore, broader interpretation would be you would include all the students for the existing, such as RFD&D and book share and others already provide materials in alternate that include talking books, digital text and various other versions. So that is the more liberal interpretation. I think that in the long run, you’d probably want to also ask the question, if that is true, why is the national repository housed at the National Printing House of the Blind. That is probably a smart move on the part of congress in terms of the way they worked at the last minute on the statute to actually attach it to a more conservation interpretation. On the other hand, if the authorized entities are allowed to determine who the qualified students are, it’s quite likely as the system evolves a larger population.
I want to say one other thing and that is our intention is not to have 25 percent of the students market getting free books, and of course the publishers are not overly concerned about the population getting this material, as long as it’s fairly small. Kids that are blind, low-vision, physically challenged for example, probably should have access to free materials. And there is statute to actually support that, but when it gets involved with a larger population of students you have to think that it’s probably a good idea to either buy those materials or buy a textbook, then qualify for the electronic version to support that student.
Jessica: Just to clarify. I think that some people might be confused as to why Chuck is talking about free versus paid and all that other stuff. Just to give you a quick run-down, the way that a lot of these as many of you know, there are copyrights to anything written, any type of a book and for this original act back in 1931, it was the act to provide books for the adult blinds essential created a copyright exception, it basically said any books that are going to be used by blind or any other physically handicapped residents of the United states, if they are certified by competent authorities as unable to read normal printed materials as a result of a physical limitation, they can get these books in alternate formats, which were audio, well they were later defined, but they could get them in others alternate formats, particularly Braille or audio at the time initially. And the way that this was set up was a s a copyright exception.
Normally if you want to take a book in change it in some way, make a copy of it you have to go to the copyright holder and say is it okay if I do that, do I owe you money, if I do that, how will that work? And copyright editor could say, “no, you can’t do that” or, “yes, you can do that, no problem”, or, “you owe me $5.00 to do that”. And you had to comply with those terms. The statue set it up so that you don’t have to ask permission, you can just do it, and you won’t violating any laws by putting it into Braille. In 1996, the Chaffee amendment was passed and it kind of took this adult blind act and it made it even broader and added digital text to its format, and it said that you could take any non dramatic non-literary work and you can put it into Braille, digital text and audio, without asking permission beforehand. If it’s done by a non-profit authorized entity, whose primary purpose is to provide access for people. Then we have IDEA which said that Chaffee amendment is a great thing, and most of our students are getting served under it, when you guys request books or recording for the blind and dyslexic RFD&D that is essentially using the Chaffee amendment. Doing it for free, the have funding from the congress to do this, but it’s essentially doing it for free. Without having to seek copyright permission beforehand. It set up this nice little system in our country and so IDEA tried to tack onto the system that is already in place and just say that that copyright system is working, and what we’re going to do is say, we’re going to expand it a little bit more an included large print as well, digital text and audio, and use the same definition of blind or other persons with print disabilities which is defined legally speaking, as blind or other physically handicapped residents of the US certified by competent authority as unable to read normal printed materials as a result of physical limitation. That might include people with learning disabilities, if you believe that learning disabilities are a physical disability. It might include people in wheelchairs, with physical disabilities - I think that’s pretty obvious if they can’t turn pages that they fall into that definition. It certainly includes blind and low vision and it could include other disabilities as well. That’s never legally been tested so we don’t know necessarily who would fall within that realm. Our goal is to serve as many students as possible, but because we’re doing it in the copyright exemption, there is no money being sent to the publishers for any version of these books that go out. There is nothing that stops us form buying an accessible version. You don’t need a law to say you can go to a publisher and request it in Braille and pay them for a Braille version, or request it in a digital format that’s accessible or that request and pay them for it. It’s if you want to avoid paying that you turn into copyright problems. I couldn’t just take a book that a publisher has done and make it into Braille or digital talking book and sell it, because I would be violating copyright law then. You can’t go to a third party who might have the skills to do that. You have to go to the original copyright owner and pay them for it. So, that is the dilemma, and the tension that is happened between the free books and the paid books. It’s easier to not have to ask permission and just do the free version. There is a willingness to pay for books that are good. We are hoping that more and more publishers will recognize the market side of things, and produce theses material for sell, that we don’t have to worry about the free versions or the limitations of who can use it and who can’t.
Chuck: And one of our two cooperative agreement centers with CAST, regarding NIMAS, actually is charged with exploring the development of the market model, as sort of the post national repository direction where the publishers have the capacity to both to produce theses materials themselves and to deliver them directly to schools along with the textbook order. It’s going to be awhile before that happens, and by the way I need to add, just because I have friends in all those organizations, my guess is that the publishers then will be working closely with the current organizations that produce those materials in order to build that internal capacity.
Catherine: I would like to go to a question about the IDEA and since the regs are not yet final, when will NIMAS actually be in effect and then how will the state education agencies stay on top of those requirements for NIMAS and NIMAC within the IDEA? Do you have some things planned?
Chuck: I can tell you that there is, let me think how much I can say, there is an effort to ensure that there is not an undue delay in the release of the NIMAS regulations. We know that the overall IDEA regulations may actually not be published in the Federal registry until the summer or even the fall, so there is some effort to figure out whether the sum approach that might get a release of the other NIMAC in NIMAS regulations before that time. And the reason that this is important is that the trigger for the publishers to begin developing theses materials in-house is that release date, the posting to the federal register. If we wait too long, we’ll have a situation with NIMAC is functional in December of 2006, but none of the publishers have materials that are actually ready to deposit.
Cyndi: Right.
Jessica: And the interesting part about that, when does it take effect, there are different things that take effect at different times. Some of the things take effect December 2006, two years after the stature was enacted. That’s a hard in fact deadline. There are other things that take effect within a certain amount of time in the federal register, so you might have some obligations that happen, prior to the ability to do other things. So, for example, as of December 2006, states need to decide whether or not to opt in or opt to the repository, they need to be entering into contracts with publishers if they are going to cooperate with the repository to send those files to the repository. If the federal register doesn’t publish the final regulations before that trigger date, states are under an obligation to enter into these contracts, but the publishers aren’t in an obligation to provide them with books that are published before that date in an accessible format. So you have the conflicting requirements and obligations, so there has to be a contract that’s signed, then the publisher will say we don’t have to comply with that yet, because it’s not been published. We are hoping that the publication will happen sooner that the so we’re not on this collision course of obligations. The first year is going to be a little tricky.
Chuck: Yeah. You know the other thing to keep in mind is that the statues stands, it went into effect July of 2005 with or without regs, so the statute is still in effect, even though there are triggers and timelines and so on. It’s that preparation of the files that tired directly to the release of the regulations, which is why we’re pushing. You probably know that there has been some national discussion about whether this needs to be slowed down a little but because it won’t be quite ready in December of 2006, I am of the opinion that we should move forward with the assumption that the regs will be released, that the publishers will be ready. Even though we know that some of the supplemental publishers for example, not the large textbook publishers, won’t be quite ready to prepare these files will have to arrange third party contracts to help them. The funding is going to be a little tricky. Even though all of that needs to be worked out, I'm very much in favor of trying to keep this on course as far as the overall time line.
Cyndi: Well, and Chuck, I would imagine, to grab the tail part of Catherine's last question, folks that are wanting to stay on top of what's going on can probably just visit your web site to get updates. Would that be an accurate place for them to go?
Chuck: That would probably be the best place to start. It's NIMAS, no www, just nimas.cast.org
Cyndi: I'm going to STA the last 15 minutes and shift directions and I'm excited to say we've been swamped with e-mail questions. I realize we're not going to get through them all. They just flooded in the last 20 minutes or so. So Jessica and Chuck, and Catherine, what I can say is let's try to respond to each of these questions as briefly as is possible so that we can get to more. So I'm going to just start right here, Chuck, with you. This comes from, well, I guess it doesn't matter where it comes from. But the question is, “I had thought that the opting in letter had already been sent to the department of Ed. Are you saying it has not yet been sent? When can we look for it?”
Chuck: In that case I was not clear. The OSEP, the part B assurances form actually went to state education agencies, probably a month and a half, maybe two months ago. I think probably about a month and a half ago. Now it's due back to OSEP by the end of April. I believe the date is the 26th of April. However, there's some work that has to be done with public feedback and comment in each of the states. So my guess is that most states have already made the decision about opting in or opting out and adopting, and have documented that, and have released some of that information to the public for feedback.
Cyndi: Okay. We have a question from one state that is asking, is there a cost associated for states to participate if they choose to opt in?
Jessica: This is Jessica. I think that that's sort of a difficult thing to answer. I think that the easy question is no, there are no direct costs for opting in. There's no fees that we're aware of directly associated with it. Right now states are spending a lot of money paying outside people to transform their books and to get these books into acceptable forms. We are hoping that that money that's being spent right now can be reduced. It is possible that initially, in shifting from old systems to new systems, that the money savings will be spent in different ways. So you might be upgrading your systems as you're saving money on how much you're spending out to convert these books and not needing to scan everything in manually. You won't be spending as many people hours doing certain things, you'll get those books a little bit quicker. So there's different costs that will be associated but there is no direct cost that's going to be associated with opting in, no fee that you have to pay to do that.
Cyndi: And Jessica, this is a question that may be perfect for you to respond to. This also comes from another state department. The question is, if you are a birth mandate state does this apply to preschool?
Jessica: The way that IDEA is set up is in part B assurances, so no, it only applies to part B, which is the 3 through 21, essentially.
Chuck: It's actually stated in the statute that it's K through 12.
Cyndi: Okay, good.
Chuck: It applies, so it's not in part C, it doesn't apply to preschool or early. It's K-12. It's part B and also in part D.
Jessica: Right.
Cyndi: Let's see. Here is, I'm going to blend a couple of questions, or I'm going to give both of them. One comes from another state department that asks, “does the NIMAS format include pictures, tables, and graphs, or is it just text?” And then another special education unit asks a similar question, which is, “define digital text.” Related but a little different.
Jessica: Let me take this first and I think Chuck and I again we have the legal versus potentially a flexible definition. With respect to the answer do the files that the publishers turn over to the NIMAC include images and text and graphs and all of that - yes, they do. How well they will be tagged or whether they'll contain alt-tags and all those specifics remains to be seen. A lot of that's going to depend on the quality of the markup of these files. There will need to be additional steps taken to make sure that the information that's present is fully useable - that all the images are properly captioned and they can be either read out through an auditory, through a screen reader or something like that or can be properly translated into Braille.
With respect to what can be done with those images once they're sent to the NIMAC, the answer is the law is fuzzy. We do not know for sure that those images can be used. Up until now under the Chaffee amendment alone, the general feeling is no, images are not included. It's digital text, it's audio, and it is Braille. You don't generally transmit digital files of images as part of that. However, IDEA adds large print and it is generally assumed that images are included in large print. The publishers are not willing to comment on this because they're a little bit nervous. They are not really… often, they don't have the electronic rights, they're worried about how that's going to affect them, and there's a concern on the part of the copyright holders are the images are what's valuable and they are going to get out there and make these files useable for mass consumption. So, it's going to be very important that only the right people use it, and it's going to be incumbent I think upon the state and LEA's requesting the final versions from the NIMAC to demand what they think is appropriate and those negotiations are going to have to happen to some extent between the NIMAC and the states and the LEA's.
Chuck: And we've actually done work on this just recently with a full NIMAS development committee. In our recent meeting in Orlando we determined that it would be appropriate and necessary for publishers to deliver the content file, the XML file, all marked up, along with all of the images, with names that are referenced within that XML content file, so that the location can be identified. Now, the initial purpose for that would be for a Braille transcriber, for example, to be able to locate where an image would be placed in that content, and to use the image for a description, or for, probably for a description in the text. Another would be someone who's doing tactile graphics, to be able to take that image and produce a tactile graphic that can be delivered for content, where it's appropriate, could be delivered to students. I'm going to take that one other step that Jessica didn't, which is to say that I believe that a robust DAISY book, an electronic book that can be navigated easily and talks with text to speech and also talks if somebody does the additional work, using natural speech, should include those images that they're critical to the textbooks, and that all of this is going to be worked out over the next couple of years.
Jessica: I guess the specific question was whether digital text would include images by definition. There is no legal definition of digital text written out. It is generally presumed not to include images, although there are people out there who would take a different position.
Cyndi: And certainly where images convey content that is not displayed anywhere else, that seems to be a more difficult thing, then, to answer.
Jessica: Right.
Cyndi: Here's the next question I'm going to try to blend a couple of questions, here. One is, “what type of…”. And this comes also from a school district. “what type of impact, if any, will NIMAS have regarding teacher created or district-created materials?” Let's start with that one.
Jessica: The answer is directly it does not have to have any. There's not any mandate on teachers to put it in the NIMAS format. It may behoove teachers who are going to convert it into multiple formats to look to the standard and utilize it to the extent of creating print instructional material.
Cyndi: Or certainly if they're thinking they'd like to publish that for others to use this would be a wise thing for them to do.
Jessica: Correct.
Chuck: There is a provision in the statute that actually allows local school districts and states to submit files, NIMAS file sets to the NIMAC. I actually hope that we don't see a lot of that for the first few years, because those files, they're fairly technical, and they have to be validated by the repository, and I think it's going to be very difficult, unless states have the capacity to do this, and only a few of them do, it's going to be very difficult for them to prepare valid files.
Cyndi: Here's our next question, and it's talking about kind of, you know, specific content, here. It also comes from a school district. “One of the most significant hurdles to cross in the production of Braille is mathematics. Nimath code it the standard but other standards are appearing internationally. What format are math books being put into? Who is overseeing this difficult task requiring unique specialties in mathematics, Braille, and publishing?”
Jessica: There's a whole group that's, a couple of groups actually that are working on this. Right now it is expected that the NIMAS format is supposed to be for math books. We've talked about the best ways to deal with the early files, and what's going to need to be done, whether things should be treated as, whether math should all be treated as an image and the most difficult parts should be left to Braille transcribers or others to do the appropriate markup from there. There's talk about using MathML in now or math speak that are out there to teach readers how to work to deal with tagging properly, NIMAS, and we are working in the NIMAS standard on adding in a component that will deal with math, and that's happening to the international DAISY standard as well.
Cyndi: Okay.
Chuck: It's just that we're - that was the perfect answer. We're going to stay in sync with the international standards route of MathML, but we're not quite at a point where we can make a specific recommendation that we could be comfortable with. So we've taken this fall-back position that Jessica briefly mentioned, and that's to use the image of an equation with a description. So the publishers will prepare that image, deliver it as part of the overall image package, and there'll be a reference to that equation in the XML. It's a terrible solution but it's the only practical one for the moment until we get a little further on down the road with the international standards.
Cyndi: You know I'm going to make a couple of statements, these came in more as statements than questions but I'll make them all the same and go to our next question. I think we'll have time for maybe one or two more. Here are the statements. One that's coming in from a school district, “please let the listeners know that the NIMAS files will still require formatting for appropriate use as textbooks. They will not be able to be embossed in Braille, for example, until the tags are formatted for Braille by someone knowledgeable about Braille formatting.” That's one comment. The other comment is, you must, that's also coming from an instructional resource center, “You must make sure that the state education department keeps their alternative format textbook procedures involved and up to date in this process of moving to the NIMAS and the NIMAC. Not all textbooks are being produced at the American Printing House for the Blind.” I think both Chuck and Jessica you both agree with both of those comments.
Chuck: I agree with both of those statements.
Jessica: There's some confusion in the last one. American printing house for the blind they're a repository this is not their LOUIE database system. There are going to be different files in the NIMAC than in LOUIE.
Chuck: It seems quite possible that the LOUIE or something similar to it will support pointers to where the finished products actually do live.
Cyndi: Got it. One question that's coming in from an ADA and IT center, the question is, “Can we talk about the publishers' responsibilities?” We sort of have as we've gone along. Here's the question you might be able to address, “Even small publishers do you expect them to provide DAISY formatted files at NIMAC prior to the effective date?” And they ask, “What's the effective date?”
Jessica: Once the final regulations are published in the federal register, any new textbook that is are published after that date must be made available in the NIMAS format if they enter into the appropriate contract. The answer is that most of the publishers, most of the schools buy from the big publishing houses. So the majority of instructional materials come from the big publishers. And the big publishers are ready, they’ve been involved, they’ve been at the table. And many will actually have the materials in some version of the NIMAS prior to the public indication of the standard because they thought it was going to be published two years ago. So they're really ready and they have taken a proactive stance.
Cyndi: I think we actually can get in, we started a titch late, I can get in a couple more questions. One individual at a school district is asking for details please. “When I request materials for a specific textbook from NIMAC since December, what exactly will I receive, and how will I receive it?”
Chuck: Well we don't know yet whether the procedures that are established by the national repository, by the NIMAC, APH, will actually allow a local school district to draw directly from that national repository. The reason I say that is that it has not yet been determined how many accounts of the NIMAC will be able to support for a state. So when you take the 50 states and the territories, and then start breaking down how many accounts you need for all the local school districts, you have thousands and thousands and thousands. What the NIMAC would like to accomplish, and I think they're right in moving in this direction, is to have a reasonable number of accounts in a state and hope that the states can work with them to manage the process where there are perhaps five to a dozen at most organizations drawing those files.
Cyndi: And here's our last question. Actually, it was about 10 questions that came in all about post-secondary. I'm not going to read them all, but we know that NIMAS deals with K12 education. Do you want to comment on what the potential or possibility is for NIMAS to assist those in post-secondary ed with the same headaches?
Chuck: There's a couple of different things happening with respect to the secondary. The first is we have a different system that's in place for providing textbooks. In post-secondary education you have lots of small publishers and you have lots of different textbooks that vary from school to school, so the ability that the cost and the expense metrics are very different from post-secondary than for K through 12. That's the first problem that we're facing in the post-secondary.
Chuck: And the two-year life span.
Jessica: Yes, and the two-year life span. The books, the techniques that we have here, and the ability, the technology has a lot of potential for post-secondary education. There are a lot of kinks that need to be worked out in the system, because the system that we've set up for K12 is not likely to work unchanged in the post-secondary arena.
Cyndi: But it may serve, parts of it may serve as a model.
Jessica: It's also driving the dialogue and driving a change in the technology of how books are being produced by the publishers.
Cyndi: Interesting.
Chuck: And just for example, chapter 219 in New York, which is higher ed, actually includes NIMAS as one of the formats that can be used to deliver files. We know it's going to take a few years, but all the K12 publishers and all the higher ed publishers, ultimately will have a process in XML development word flow that will make it easy for them to develop NIMAS files.
Cyndi: Great. That will be our closing question. My apologies for all the questions we didn't get to. I'm telling you we were flooded and as I look at them they were all fabulous. Maybe what we'll try to do is post some questions, and some answers, of course I'll have to see if I can beg a few minutes from Chuck and Jessica to help answer a few of these. Well, I just want to thank all of our panelists, and give folks an opportunity to say any kind of closing remarks before I wrap things up for today. Let's start with you, Catherine.
Catherine: Well, I learned a lot of new information. I'm thrilled to have these resources available, and will certainly make use of the web sites that you provided in working with states. Thank you.
Cyndi: Chuck or Jessica
Chuck: I am so optimistic that within a year or so we are going to begin seeing progress and a lot of cooperation between publishers in states and local school systems and please do visit the website.
Jessica: I guess the only thing I would say is that what’s going to be key here is that the state and the LEAS really take the time to work together, you need to be working with the people in the state that are developing curriculum and deciding what to purchase and what technology to purchase and make sure they work together and you figure out the way to address NIMAS in your state or LEA that best suits your needs.
Cyndi: Thank you to all three of you, this has been wonderful. I feel like I could continue this conversation for the next couple of hours, but we barely nicked the tip on the iceberg, I know that. But, thank you so much. In just a short time this entire broadcast will be archived, synchronized with the captions that many of you have been enjoying, so come back, or share this link with others that you think would benefit from the information. What I would like to mention is that the National Center on Disability and Access to Education will host the next in our series of webcast. That will be on April 26, at the same time, depending on your time zone, same time you attended today. The title for the next broadcast is “Mobile Education and Access for Students with Disabilities” so join in if that’s an area of interest. And visit the ncdae.org site for lots of information or to join our affiliates list to get regular publications and items of interest that do go out. Thank you all so much and have a great week.