As educators, we are motivated to provide all learners with the opportunity to succeed, but like anything, it is difficult to fully understand something until you have experienced it yourself. Having a learner with low vision in your class for the first time can be exciting and a little scary. What kind of materials will they need? How will they move about the classroom independently and safely? How can you keep them engaged and positive through their struggles? How can you help them focus on and celebrate their successes when times are tough?
At Carnegie Learning, we know that having a student with a visual impairment can present certain instructional challenges, and we also know that the classroom teacher has an opportunity to make a huge and lasting impact on the student’s attitude toward education, and by extension, on his or her future, and we are committed to supporting you by providing accessible materials for all learners. We want to support you by helping you secure accessible classroom materials. For us, this means making our files available in a format that enables the creation of the materials your student needs in class.
The National Instructional Materials Access Center—NIMAC—was created by IDEA in 2004. It is a federally-funded, searchable, online file repository of K-12 print textbooks in XML based NIMAS format. NIMAS source files can be used to create accessible specialized formats (i.e., Braille, audio, digital, large-print, etc.) of print instructional materials.
Carnegie Learning is committed to providing accessible materials to all students and has a deep catalog of CL courses available in the NIMAC repository. We work with a vendor to create NIMAS formatted files, which we upload at the NIMAC website. Once NIMAC confirms that the uploaded files are correct and complete, they become available for download.
After our files have been successfully uploaded in NIMAC, it is up to the state to continue the process. Most states partner with an organization that produces accessible formats for student who have different print needs. A teacher or other staff member of a US education agency can download the NIMAS books for qualifying students once they are secured by the partner.
Partners may include national third-party authorized entities (such as Recording for the Blind & Dyslexic, American Printing House for the Blind, Bookshare.org, and Talking Tapes), regional or state conversion organizations (such as Texas Region IV ESC Braille Services, the California Department of Education Clearinghouse for Specialized Media and Technology , the Kentucky Accessible Materials Consortium, and other state instructional materials resource centers), software developers and file conversion services, and accessible media producers (such as Braille transcribers).
K-12 students with IEPs are eligible for accounts with the state’s partner.
If you receive notification that you will have a student with different print needs in your class, the first step is to contact the school district office to request the modified materials for the student.
In most cases, the school district office should take it from here, although if they’ve not had a student who requires these materials in the past, there may not be an established protocol that anyone is familiar with. What follows is the typical path to securing materials for a student.
The district should contact their NIMAC partner directly, or transfer the information to the state department of education’s NIMAC Coordinator, who will request that the materials be added to the NIMAC partner’s repository so the materials can be accessed by either a teacher or a designated staff member for local printing.
Most partners have different online platforms and products for student use. For example, Bookshare.org has Bookshelf, which is a repository where the teacher can assign titles to the student, and the student can download and read books on a screen. Many organizations have web readers, which allow students read books online and take advantage of Google Chrome’s accessibility features.
Student access to these tools will require the district to create an individual account for the student with their partner organization.
With the greater availability of authoring tools, educators often opt to create their own supplementary materials to support classroom curriculum. Most of these authoring tools include accessibility options, but sifting through the requirements can be daunting. This website distills down requirements and offers helpful ideas for making self-created materials accessible for all learners. AEM Center: Designing for Accessibility
If you are curious about accessibility strategies for your learners with low vision, here is a good place to start. AEM Center: Using Accessible Formats
If you want more ideas on how to craft your physical space to accommodate learners with low vision, this is a great resource. Classroom Adaptations for Students with Low Vision
This is an amazing perspective on visual impairment and its lesser known effects on learning. Project IDEAL: Visual Impairments
Bookshare.org is a great place to explore with your learners with low vision. There is a library of books made accessible in a variety of platforms just waiting to be explored!
You can search NIMAC here https://nimac.overdrive.com/ContentInventory to find out if the materials you need have already been created and uploaded.
If you search NIMAC and don’t find a CL product you need, contact the Carnegie Learning Product Management team at ProductManagementTeam@carnegielearning.com.
It can be about a month from notification to successful NIMAC upload of our files (it’s a process), so the more advanced notice we have, the better.
We look forward to helping you make your low-vision learners' year a huge success!
