All students should be able to fully take part in school lessons and assessments with materials that meet their individual learning needs.
RIMAC helps make sure that eligible students with disabilities get the learning materials they need at the same time as their classmates, as the law requires.
Paul V. Sherlock Center on Disabilities houses the comprehensive RIMAC library on the Rhode Island College campus. It provides educators, individuals, families and service providers with accessible materials and support for our state’s students.
The Rhode Island Materials Access Center (RIMAC), in partnership with the Rhode Island Department of Education, is the Accessible Instructional Materials (AIM) Library in Rhode Island. This statewide library creates, provides and lends accessible instructional materials to students with disabilities and students with vision and print disabilities.
RIMAC offers book kits that match classroom lessons and support Common Core standards. Each kit includes a mix of materials. These may include audiobooks, adapted print books, visuals, 3-D story models, sensory tools and games to help students learn. Teachers can borrow these kits to create engaging, accessible lessons for all learners.
Math and science kits are designed to make lessons more interactive and easier to understand. They include hands-on models, manipulatives and 3-D printed items to help explain key concepts.
RIMAC also offers social-emotional learning kits that include hands-on tools and activities for teaching self-regulation, social skills and communication. These kits are useful for teachers, speech-language pathologists and social workers supporting students at different levels.
The National Instructional Materials Access Center (NIMAC) was created under the IDEA law. It serves as a national library for digital source files that help create accessible versions of K–12 textbooks, such as braille, large print, digital text and audiobooks. The NIMAC website lists all files sent by publishers that were requested through school district purchasing contracts.
These files use a special format called NIMAS, which stands for National Instructional Materials Accessibility Standard. Publishers began using this format in 2006.
NIMAS files make it easier and faster to create accessible learning materials. They are source files that must be converted into usable formats, such as braille, large print, digital audio or accessible e-books like DAISY or EPUB. This conversion is done by Accessible Media Producers (AMPs) using special software.
Because NIMAS files are raw and must be converted, they are not available directly to schools or students.
Only students who qualify for this service through an Individualized Education Program (IEP) can receive materials made from NIMAS files. Students with 504 plans do not qualify.
Publishers send NIMAS files to NIMAC only when requested through a purchasing contract with a school district. For this reason, every school district’s contract or purchase order should include a clause that requires publishers to create NIMAS files and send them to NIMAC.
Please contact Associate Director Stefanie Davit for NIMAC materials.
By agreeing to deliver the materials marked with “NIMAS” on this contract or purchase order, the publisher agrees to prepare and submit on or before [month/day/year] a NIMAS fileset to the NIMAC that complies with the terms and procedures set forth by the National Instructional Materials Access Center (NIMAC) (IDEA Title I, Part D, sec. 674(e)).
The publisher also agrees to mark up materials eligible for NIMAS submission that contain mathematical and scientific instructional content by using the MathML modular extension of the DAISY/NIMAS Structure Guidelines , as posted and maintained at the DAISY Consortium website [refer to the latest applicable version].
Should the vendor be a distributor of the materials and not the publisher, the distributor agrees to immediately notify the publisher of its obligation to submit NIMAS filesets of the purchased materials to the NIMAC. The files will be used for the production of accessible formats as permitted under the law for eligible students (IDEA Title I, Part B, sec. 612(a)).”
Stefanie Davit
Associate Director
