It’s a little confusing, but these acronyms are interrelated and refer to different facets of the same format. The following summary is excerpted from a more detailed discussion of the National Instructional Materials Accessibility Standard Report found on the CAST website (http://www.cast.org/nff/nimas and http://www.cast.org/ncac/NIMAS/executive_summary.htm)

• National File Format (NFF) - The Office of Special Education Programs at the U.S. Department of Education funded the National Center on Accessing the General Curriculum at CAST (Center for Applied Special Technology) to convene a panel of experts, the National File Format Technical Panel, and to establish technical specifications for a voluntary National Instructional Materials Accessibility Standard (NIMAS).

• NIMAS, the proposed format, will facilitate the provision of accessible, alternate format versions of print textbooks to PreK-12 students with disabilities. The application of NIMAS will provide standardized source files from which accurate and reliable alternate formats may be developed and distributed to qualified students with disabilities.

• DTB, ANSI/NISO Z39.86 - Rather than developing a whole new standard, The National File Format Technical Panel has identified the NIMAS as an application (i.e. subset) of the DTBook element set of the ANSI/NISO Z39.86 standard. ANSI/NISO Z39.86 is an international standard which defines the format and content of the electronic file set that comprises a digital talking book (DTB) (http://www.niso.org/standards/resources/Z39-86-2002.html).

• DAISY - Commonly referred to as "DAISY" (Digital Accessible Information System), the ANSI/NISO Z39.86 standard provides the technical protocol for creating accessible digital versions of print works.

(More information is available in the DAISY Structure Guidelines at http://www.daisy.org/publications/guidelines/sg-daisy3/structguide.htm#contents).

The DAISY DTB is a collection of digital files that provides an accessible representation of the printed book for blind, visually disabled, and print-disabled users. These files may contain digital audio recordings of human speech, marked-up text, and a range of machine-readable files.

How does XML fit in? - The structure of the book is designated by the XML tags and is accessible to the reader by use of a browser or a playback device. The DAISY DTB utilizes the technology of the Internet with some specialized applications added to provide greatly improved access to the information.

XML provides the producer with the ability to structure a book in great detail. Compared to HTML markup, XML increases markup options and makes more detailed structure and proper nesting possible.

Because the DTBook is so comprehensive, the group opted to treat NIMAS as an implementation of the DTBook standard. It is not intended to narrow the scope of the DTBook standard, but to define the minimum actions that publishers must take in order to be in compliance with the standard. Additionally, the referenced guidelines are intended to establish best practices for how the tags should be applied to instructional materials.

The Baseline Element Set details the minimum requirement that must be delivered to fulfill the NIMAS standard. It is the responsibility of the publishers to provide this NIMAS-compliant XML file along with a separate PDF file with embedded images for reference in creating descriptions, and a NIMAS-compliant package file. Content files meeting the NIMAS must be valid to the dtbook110.dtd [see ANSI/NISO Z39.86, Appendix 1(http://www.niso.org/standards/resources/Z39-86-2002.html#DTBookDTD)].