The Rats of NIMAS

Okay, so the play on words here is supposed to be the "rats of NIMH," a children's movie which came from a book, I believe; but I don't mean to compare the hard working people on NIMAS and NIMAC to unsanitary rodents. On the contrary, I was just exploring CAST's NIMAS website, and I am impressed by what they are doing.

I feel like I finally have at least a rudimentary handle on how NIMAS is played out. Some helpful definitions:

• NIMAS: National Instructional Materials Accessibility Standard
• NIMAC: National Instructional Materials Access Center
  

And here's how it all works:

CAST has been appointed by the national government to run two NIMAS-related organizations: NIMAS Development Center and NIMAS Technical Assistance Center

The NIMAS Development Center sponsors these committees:

• NIMAS Standards Board
• NIMAS Advisory Council (which handles state-level implementation)
• AIM Consortium (group of 15 states devoted to improving instruction for K-12 students with disabilities)

Each of these met in Florida in January. In looking at the notes from the Standards Board meeting, I was struck by how new some of this is! The AIM Consortium was just created in the fall. I was also wondering why I hadn't heard of any of this before, since NIMAS started in 2004...