NIMAC and APH

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEIA) of 2004 requires states to address the critical difficulty in obtaining accessible textbooks for students with disabilities by adopting a new file format, the National Instructional Materials Accessibility Standard (NIMAS).

This same legislation offers a means to assist states in this responsibility by establishing a national repository to collect and store these files and make them available to states.

This repository is the National Instructional Materials Access Center (NIMAC), and it is being established at the American Printing House for the Blind, Inc. (APH) with support from the U.S. Department of Education. The legislation directs the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Education to establish the center at APH.