Published by Novara Consulting Group LLC, under rules written to be quoted back to us.
The Index is one of three documentary instruments Novara Consulting Group LLC publishes under one method: the National Deaf Education Data Index, the Accessibility Governance Record, and the SLAT Index. This page carries the independence and disclosure rules in full, because they are the condition on which everything else rests.
Three records, one method
Each answers a question the others cannot: whom the system serves and how it is funded, what an institution publishes about how it governs accessibility and what its vendors publish, and whether the technology can be trusted. All share primary sources only, explicit gaps, and no claim beyond what the instrument's own rubric supports.
National Deaf Education Data Index
This site: a fifty-one jurisdiction primary-source reference on Deaf education, in three dimensions, with a baseline and an annual cycle.
Accessibility Governance Record
What public institutions publish about accessibility governance, and, in the Procurement Accessibility Record, what their vendors publish.
SLAT Index
An evaluation standard for sign language AI and AI interpreting technology, with ratings computed from evidence under published rules.
The rules, the publisher, and the boundary
The rules in full
These rules bind every person who works on the Index. A breach is logged, the affected file is re-issued under a new version with the breach stated in its changelog, and a second breach of the same rule by the same person ends that person's work on the Index.
| Rule | Text |
|---|---|
| 1. Every jurisdiction in frame is documented | The fifty-one files are built regardless of whether a state, a state school, an agency, or an organization in that state is a client, a partner, a funder, or a critic of the publisher, its principals, or its brands. Omission is not available as a courtesy or as a sanction. |
| 2. No payment alters a figure, a code, a frame decision, or a finding | A State Partner fee, a license, a commissioned build, a funded wave, or any other payment buys the work and its timing and nothing else. The only route by which a released file changes is the notice and correction procedure, open to everyone on identical terms. |
| 3. Every file carries a disclosure block | The narrative's opening section and the workbook README state every relationship between the publisher, its principals, its brands, or its instruments and any body named in the file: client, former client, State Partner, licensee, funder, prospect contacted, or none. None is stated in words. Compiled from the publisher's records at each release and dated. |
| 4. Declarations | Every person who works on a state file declares, before starting, any relationship with any body named in the file. Where a declared relationship bears on a finding, a second person reviews that finding at arm's length and the trail says so. |
| 5. Funders, partners, and licensees receive no editorial input | They see a file when everyone else does, or under notice on the same terms as the bodies named. They may propose corrections through the correction route and through no other channel. Acknowledgment of a State Partner is a named line on the state page and nothing more. |
| 6. Notice and correction are not sales channels | A notice, a correction acknowledgment, or a response to a licensee carries no description of the publisher's services, no offer, and no invitation beyond the accuracy of the file. A question about services is answered separately, after release. |
| 7. The publisher's own house is in order | This site meets the standard the publisher advises on, publishes its own accessibility statement and contact routes, and is held to the same evidence and citation discipline as any file. |
| 8. Relationship to the SLAT Index and the Accessibility Governance Record | Where a body documented in the Index is also a SLAT Index client or an entity in the Record, the disclosure block says so; the SLAT Index's twenty-four month publication bar applies to evaluative findings there and not to the documentary findings here, which are quotations and counts rather than ratings. |
Paid tiers and the public window
The state page's summary figures, the method, the register, the DOI, and the correction route are free to everyone; the file itself, the narrative, the workbook, and the verification trail, is licensed. A licensed file and a free summary carry the same figures; the tier changes what a reader can download, never what the Index says.
Published by Novara Consulting Group LLC
The publisher of record is Novara Consulting Group LLC, a Minnesota limited liability company. The Index is one of three documentary instruments it publishes under one method, beside the Accessibility Governance Record and the SLAT Index. Every jurisdiction is documented whether or not a body in it is a client, a partner, a funder, or a critic of the publisher; no payment alters a figure, a code, or a frame decision; and every file carries a disclosure block.
The publisher sells advisory and instruction services, described on its own site and never on this one; a question about them is answered separately, after release, and never through the notice. The Index's site carries no services page and no offer.
What the Index is not
It is not an advocacy document, a rating, a ranking, a certification, or a legal opinion. It does not evaluate any program, school, agency, or district, and it never states that any body complies or fails to comply with any law. It is not a government publication and is not affiliated with any agency it documents.
It is not a right of reply to an evaluation, because it makes none; notice and correction are a correction route and nothing else. And it is not consent: silence, objection, or a request to be omitted does not prevent release, because inclusion is determined by the frame and by the first independence rule.
NONE FOUND is a statement about publication, not about service delivery.
Obligations under IDEA are not evidence of a program.