District/School Administration PK-16 Program Support
Educational Technology

Accessing Digital Text and Audiobooks

1. Start by searching the online libraries of Bookshare for digital text or Learning Ally(previously Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic) for audiobooks.
   
   
2. If you do not find the book at Bookshare or Learning Ally, try searching the National Instructional Materials Access Library (NIMAC).
   
   
3. If the book is available at the NIMAC, follow the instructions below to request it from Bookshare or Learning Ally.

   Bookshare - Complete Bookshare's online form at http://bookshare.org/contactUs. Use the pull-down menu "My question is about" and select "NIMAC Textbooks and Other NIMAC Questions." Be sure to include all of your contact information, as well as the book title, author, publisher, and ISBN. In approximately two weeks, Bookshare will send you an email indicating that the student-ready digital file is available for download from Bookshare's online NIMAS collection.

   Learning Ally (formerly Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic) - Send an email to nimas@learningally.org with the book title, author, publisher, and ISBN, along with your school or district's Learning Ally member name and ID. In approximately two weeks, Learning Ally will ship a CD to your school with a student-ready version including electronic text with synthetic audio, plus any images provided by the book's publisher.

4. If you do not find the book at the NIMAC, you can ask the book's publisher if digital files are available. The publisher may be willing to send the files to the NIMAC or to your school.
   
   
5. Remember, to ensure that materials will be available when you need them, your district's purchasing contracts with publishers should require the publisher to send NIMAS files to the NIMAC.

For more information, see National Instructional Materials Accessibility Standard.