Center on Disability and Community Inclusion (VT UCEDD) Joins the AIM Consortium to Deliver Accessible Instructional Materials

April 23, 2009

The Center on Disability and Community Inclusion, Vermont's UCEDD, and the Vermont Department of Education will work with CAST and 15 other AIM consortium states until December of 2009 to speed delivery of Accessible Instructional Materials to students with disabilities. The U.S. Department of Education's Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) has awarded 15 states and CAST, a leading education research and development organization, $4.9 million to launch the Accessible Instructional Materials (AIM) Consortium to improve the quality, availability, and timely delivery of accessible instructional materials to K-12 students with print disabilities. The AIM consortium represents 15 states serving over 1.3 million students under IDEA, of which over one-half million are estimated to have print disabilities. The AIM Consortium will explore the most efficient means to provide students with disabilities the materials they need to access, participate, and achieve in the general educational curriculum. The major federal special education and general education laws-the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), respectively-both call on states to guarantee such access. IDEA 2004, in particular, mandates that all state education agencies adopt the National Instructional Materials Accessibility Standard (NIMAS). The AIM Consortium includes Delaware, Georgia, Iowa, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New York, Pennsylvania, Utah, Vermont, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. Their efforts will be coordinated and supported by CAST, a nonprofit educational organization with a decade's worth of experience leading major federal centers to improve access to the curriculum.

For more information on Vermont AIM contact Marie MacLeod, Co-Director, [email protected]