The Alternate Formats Solutions Initiative (AFSI)

CAPED Conference Presentation

South Tahoe, CA

October 9, 2006

Speaker Notes:

Welcome (Gaier) to our session, we were putting this together I volunteered to introduce Rick. You go to a lot of conferences and you meet a lot of people…over time you know who are really working from the heart. When searching for someone to head the publishing initiative. He knows the publishing side and the disability side.

Thank you Gaier and all who made it possible for this presentation. I will go through a presentation (pitch to publishing audience) and go through quickly and then open to questions and what more we can take into the process. Comparing what is going on Post Secondary vs K-12. There will be a clearinghouse depository opening K-12.

The reauthoriztation of IDEA has in it some built in Instructional Materials Accessibility they NIMAS (National Instructional Materials Accessibility Standards) The states who participate means that publishers have the NIMAS file to central clearinghouse (opens December 3, 2006 – the titles will be limited only those published August 13th and rest – earlier are grandfather in)…and the file is different they want they publish in. Chaffey population (only one with a legal basis) covered to used…wavier put into the copyright act if the publisher puts a file in the IMAC then issue over. This still does not cover the learning disabled population. For more information you can check the website: NIMAS.cast.org.

In this project are there things that can be done not only for K-12 but also postsecondary systems to utilized e-text without copyright infringement.

Question: Is it really that complicated and or difficult to create a NIMAS file from the original file? The larger companies that use HTML format it won’t be too difficult because it is easy to patch program. The small publishers with specialized topics/contents will run into difficulty in the method of format is not standardized and usually not HTML.

On to slide 2.