Aiming for Achievement DVD Glossary

AIMing for Achievement DVD Glossary This glossary was prepared to accompany the AIMing for Achievement DVD and contains terms and their definitions for viewers who may not be familiar with acronyms and terminology currently used in the field of accessible instructional materials.

AIM (Accessible Instructional Materials)

Accessible instructional materials, as referenced in the DVD, are specialized formats of printed textbooks and related curricular content that must be provided to learners who are unable to gain and use information from printed materials because of a disability. Specialized formats include braille, audio, large print, and digital text.

AMPs (Accessible Media Producers)

Accessible media producers (AMPs) use a variety of means to transform print materials into specialized formats such as braille, audio, digital text, or large print formats of print instructional materials exclusively for use by blind or other persons with print disabilities. States may assign source files from the NIMAC to AMPs for conversation to student-ready specialized formats. States may also designate an AMP as an authorized user (AU) so that the AMP can download files directly from the NIMAC as an agent of the state. Major AMPs supported by the U.S. Department of Education and involved in NIMAS work include the American Printing House for the Blind (APH), Bookshare, and Learning Ally (formerly RFB&D).

AU (Authorized User)

An authorized user (AU) is an agent of a state department of education who has access to the NIMAC database in order to download or to assign NIMAS fileset(s) for conversion to specialized formats in accordance with established agreements with the NIMAC.

Contracted Braille (also referred to as grade II braille)

Braille characters are much larger than their printed equivalents, and the standard 11" x 11.5" (28 cm x 30 cm) page size used for Braille has room for only 25 lines of 43 characters. To reduce space and to increase potential reading speed, virtually all braille books are transcribed in what is known as Grade II Braille or Contracted Braille, which uses a series of contractions to reduce space and potentially speed the process of reading. DAISY (Digital Accessible Information SYstem)

DAISY refers to a technical standard for producing accessible and navigable multimedia documents. In current practice, these documents are Digital Talking Books (DTBs), digital text books, or a combination of synchronized audio and text books.

(DRMr) Digital Rights Manager

In some states (e.g., Minnesota in the DVD), digital rights managers are a district- or campus- based person designated to request, receive, and track usage of copyrighted materials in specialized formats for students with disabilities. Duties of a DRMr typically include ensuring that documentation of student qualifications for AIM are appropriately maintained and that materials in specialized formats are used only by qualifying students. A person with similar responsibilities may be call by a different title in other states.

IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act)

Most recently reauthorized as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act in 2004, IDEA is a federal law governing the rights of children with disabilities to receive a free and appropriate public education (FAPE) in a least restrictive environment (LRE).

IEP (Individual Education Program)

An individual education program (IEP) is a written plan that is individually developed for students identified as having a disability under IDEA. The plan is developed, reviewed, and revised in accordance with IDEA regulations by a duly constituted IEP team of educators, parents, and student (when appropriate). An IEP is based on achievement, assessment, evaluation data and contains goals that will guide the delivery of special education and related services.

Nemeth Braille Code

Nemeth is a specialized braille code used for conveying mathematical and scientific notation. Its particular strength is in conveying mathematics in a linear way while still remaining compact enough to be practical.

NIMAC (National Instructional Materials Access Center)

The National Instructional Materials Access Center (NIMAC) is a central national repository established at the American Printing House for the Blind (APH) to store and to maintain NIMAS filesets. It features an automated system for allowing publishers to deposit NIMAS-conformant files within the repository. Files are checked to confirm that they are valid NIMAS-conformant files and then cataloged in a web-based database. Those who have been authorized for access have user identifications and passwords. These authorized users may search the NIMAC

2 database and directly download or assign fileset(s) for conversion to accessible instructional materials for those elementary and sceondary students with qualifying disabilities.

3 NIMAS-Conformant Files

NIMAS-conformant source files are XML files valid to the NIMAS technical specification that can be used to create accessible specialized formats (e.g., braille, audio, digital, large print, etc.) of print-based instructional materials. A complete NIMAS-conformant set of files includes XML content files, a package file, images, and a PDF file of the source content's title page (or whichever page contains ISBN and copyright information).

Refreshable Braille

Refreshable braille is provided by a display or terminal that is an electronic devicewhich raises dots or pins through holes in a flat surface. Generally, 40 to 80 braille cells are displayed at one time.

Section 504

Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 is part of a civil rights law that prohibits discrimination against qualified individuals with disabilities. Section 504 regulations require a school district to provide a free appropriate public education (FAPE) to each qualified student with a disability, regardless of the nature or severity of the disability. A written 504 plan is developed to guide the provision of instructional services, including accommodations and modifications, designed to meet a student's individual educational needs as adequately as the needs of nondisabled students are met.

SIMBraille

The SimBraille font (a simulated braille font) from Duxbury Systems uses ink dots to display Braille cells that includes the use of shadow dots for unused positions. It is often used for proofreading purposes.

TTS (Text-to-Speech)

Text-to-speech or speech synthesis is the artificial production of human speech and is generally accomplished with special software and/or hardware. The quality of various speech generation engines can vary considerably. Some voices sound almost human while others sound more primitive and robotic. The robotic-sounding voices are considered desirable for achieving high rates of “reading” speed.

Uncontracted Braille (also referred to as grade I braille)

Uncontracted braille provides a character-by-character transcription of a source text and is sometimes considered best for teaching young children braille. For experienced readers, it does not provide the space saving (and therefore reading speed and efficiency) of contracted braille.

4 XML (EXtensible Mark-Up Language)

XML is a universal format for structured documents and data. It is a set of rules, guidelines, and conventions for designing text formats for data in a way that produces files that are easy to generate and read (by a computer), are unambiguous, and avoid common pitfalls such as lack of extensibility, lack of support for internationalization/localization, and platform-dependency. Like HTML, XML makes use of elements and attributes, but while HTML specifies what each means (and often how content will display in a browser), XML uses elements, attributes, etc., only to delimit pieces of data and leaves the interpretation of that data completely to the application that reads it. The separation of content and its presentation is a primary advantage of XML.