Access Curriculum

Learn More About Accessible Materials

A movement is underway to make classroom books accessible to students with disabilities. It was sparked by IDEA 2004, and now textbook publishers are beginning to create accessible digital versions of their books.  Many books are now available in accessible formats. Have you prepared your plan to make your district’s curriculum accessible?

Watch Fairfax County Public School's AT team as they describe their accessible instructional materials initiative live from ATIA 2010.

IDEA 2004 and Accessible Instructional Materials

The language in IDEA 2004 aims to ensure that all students have equal access to the same information at the same time, regardless of their abilities. By equal access, it means that core curriculum materials are provided in the formats that are appropriate for the individual. It’s clear that students who are blind or have print disabilities must be provided with book formats that are accessible to them. But, it also goes further to say, that educational authorities have the responsibility to “ensure that students with disabilities who need instructional materials in accessible formats, but are not included under the definition of blind or other persons with print disabilities…receive those instructional materials in a timely manner.”  This includes all of the students receiving special services who struggle to read using traditional print, not just your students who qualify as exempt from the copyright laws. With that said, there are two categories of students we must think about when pursuing accessible formats: 1) students who qualify as exempt and 2) students who would benefit from alternative formats. There are several good ways to obtain materials within each category. Follow the guide below that includes steps and strategies to secure accessible files for your students.

 

Students Who Qualify As Exempt From Copyright Laws

About Copyright Exemption Qualifications—The Chafee Amendment The first question that must be answered is whether or not your student qualifies.  Read the Regulations Organizations that provide materials to individuals who qualify require you to have a signed “proof of disability” document on file, signed by a “competent authority” as defined within the regulations. For more information regarding qualifying students visit the following web site: http://idea.ed.gov/explore/view/p/,root,dynamic,QaCorner,5, NOTE: "Qualifying students" relates only to the copyright laws, not education laws. Under IDEA 2004 and FAPE, a local education agency is not relieved of its responsibility to provide accessible materials to students who do not qualify as exempt.

 

Follow the steps below to obtain accessible materials for students who qualify.

First search the NIMAC for a specific book title to see if it's available.

Textbook Available

If the textbook is in the NIMAC, contact your state NIMAC Coordinator and request the formats you need.

Find your state NIMAC Coordinator

Textbook Unavailable

 

Step 1: Search the Bookshare Repository. Bookshare has 50,000+ digital books and contemporary missives that have been submitted for use by individuals who qualify as members under the Chafee Amendment.
NOTE: Membership to Bookshare is currently free for students qualifying under Chafee in U.S. public schools as a result of being awarded a U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) grant. In addition, Bookshare offers its members Don Johnston's Read:OutLoud Bookshare Edition text reader for FREE! 

Step 2: Contact the Publisher:
You should request that your State NIMAC Coordinator contact the publisher and ask to speak with the company’s NIMAS Coordinator to request that a copy of the textbook and accompanying materials be placed in the National Instructional Materials Accessibility Center (NIMAC). You may also contact the publishers directly. If the files are unavailable, publishers will sometimes offer you alternatives, including permission to scan books.

Here are two contacts from McGraw-Hill and Pearson. These two companies produce the majority of textbooks under several imprints listed below.

McGraw-Hill including: Glencoe, Macmillan, SRA, Wright Group

Contact: April Cleland
NIMAS Coordinator
april_cleland@mcgraw-hill.com

Pearson including: Prentice Hall, Heinemann, Pearson Scott Foresman, Pearson Longman
K12Accessibility@Pearson.com

 

Students Who Are Not Exempt And Require Text Alternatives

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As stated above, the local education agency is not relieved of their responsibility to provide accessible materials just because a student doesn’t qualify as exempt from the copyright laws. According to NAEP, 92% of your identified students are reading below grade level, and on average, less than 1% of those students qualify as exempt. The formats that you can secure (NIMAS, DAISY) for the students who don’t qualify as exempt from copyright will benefit your students who ARE exempt, too.  If you follow the steps below, you will save yourself a lot of time by not securing your accessible books twice.

For a quick picture of who could benefit from accessible books in your district, try our Universal Screening Tool (PDF) in your district.

Step 1: Work with the entity within your district that is responsible for purchasing or adopting curricular materials to remind them (or in most cases, teach them) to request and include digital formats of textbooks and supporting materials “in addition to, or in lieu of the traditional printed textbooks.” This must be done during negotiations and included before the time of purchase, not after. Many publishers are beginning to sell their books in accessible books. Pearson’s HTMLbooks are one example.

Step 2: Provide your purchasers with the following sample contract language to include in their textbook contracts.
NOTE: Since textbook companies are already required to create these formats under the NIMAS regulations, the files do exist. It is within your power to negotiate with publishers to get what you need.

View Sample Contract Language Exemplars (PDF)

When negotiating for files with the publisher, you should also build in a review procedure before signing the contract or purchase order. Before the time of purchase, request that sample files be sent to you so that you can test and ensure “true accessibility”—purchasing agents and curriculum coordinators within your organization may not fully understand your user needs so you must make sure the publishers are providing formats that meet your requirements.

Step 3: Provide the technology that makes your eBooks accessible
Once you acquire accessible eBooks, you will need the right technology to read them. Consider whole-school solutions as well as devices for individual students.

Whole-school solutions:

Perhaps the most versatile and essential tool when providing access to eBooks is a text reader. They make the eBook files accessible and offer reading comprehension tools. The new version of our Read:OutLoud software is compatible with the widest range of eBooks and features native compatibility with NIMAS, DAISY, and PDF files without conversion!

	For widespread adoption (Universal Design for Learning), we offer an affordable whole-school license to Read:OutLoud. Over 4,000 schools purchased Unlimited Site Licenses to Read:OutLoud in just the past two years. Find out why. Watch our 5-minute Read:OutLoud product demonstration.
Read:OutLoud providing access to a PDF file

Even after you obtain eBooks from your publishers, you will likely have some books or book files that are still not available in accessible formats. After you get permission from the publisher, there are ways to make the printed text accessible through OCR software using EasyConverter.

 

To utilize EasyConverter’s OCR scanning capabilities, just connect a scanner, and you can easily convert printed textbook pages into accessible digital formats.  EasyConverter is also a powerful file conversion tool. It’s the only software tool available that quickly converts all of your digital text files (Kurzweil, Microsoft Word, PDF, and even images containing text) into accessible formats (DAISY/NIMAS, MP3, Braille, and Large Print).

 

Individual Student Solutions

To meet the needs of individual students, we offer two portable text reader solutions—the Intel® Reader and ClassMate Reader. We also offer gh Player™, a text reader designed for students who are blind.

The Intel Reader is a portable scan-and-read device. Students can take pictures of printed documents and the Intel Reader automatically converts them into an accessible digital format and then reads it aloud.

The ClassMate Reader is an affordable portable text reader. Simply transfer accessible eBook files onto the ClassMate Reader’s SD Card and your students can access those books at home or at school.

gh PLAYER is a text reader specifically designed for blind and low vision users. Whether your students read with high contrast large text, recorded or synthesized speech, or Braille output to a refreshable display, the gh PLAYER gives them full access to the curriculum

 

Step 4: Generate awareness in your district regarding teacher and school-created materials and worksheets. These should be saved in an accessible format so that all students may have access (e.g. Microsoft Word will allow you to save as .txt, .rtf, .pdf, and .xml—these are all accessible formats)

NOTE: Microsoft now offers a free plug-in that enables you to save Word documents as “DAISY” files. DAISY files and NIMAS files utilize the same format standards!  

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