DAISY News

Victor Reader Stream CD Edition combines the world renowned Victor Reader Stream and a special CD player accessory. Victor Reader Stream CD Edition is perfect for people who do not have a personal computer. It is the easiest way to transfer a collection of DAISY books on CDs onto one single, portable audio playback device, without the use of a PC.

Key Benefits:

• Ideal for readers who do not use a personal computer and who want the benefit of a pocket size Stream DAISY/MP3 player
• The perfect solution to transition from using Victor Reader Wave to Victor Reader Stream

Details are available on the HumanWare website.

March 3rd, 2010, Palo Alto, CA – The U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP), awarded $5 million to Benetech, in collaboration with The Carl and Ruth Shapiro Family National Center for Accessible Media (NCAM) at WGBH and the U.S. Fund for DAISY (USFDAISY), to create a research and development center that will greatly improve the processes and availability of accessible images for students with disabilities. The new Digital Image and Graphic Resources for Accessible Materials Center (DIAGRAM) will develop tools and best practices that will make it easier and more cost-effective to create and use accessible images across a range of educational content.

The new Digital Image and Graphic Resources for Accessible Materials Center (DIAGRAM) will develop tools and best practices that will make it easier and more cost-effective to create and use accessible images across a range of educational content. More information is available in the press release.

The Ulverscroft Foundation and the IFLA Libraries Serving Persons with Print Disabilities Section are pleased to announce the outcome of the bids for funding from the 2010 program. Ulverscroft Foundation has made 20,000 Pounds GB available for individual and organization awards to assist the development of library services for print disabled people worldwide and to foster cooperation between library services serving these persons. Individual awards have been offered to:

Mark Freeman, Libraries Manager, South Tyneside Library Service and Chair of Share The Vision, UK

Mark as a public libraries manager wishes to build on existing relations between the libraries in the North East of England and the Eastern Cape of South Africa. Mark has been awarded 2,150 Pounds GB to visit the Associate Member of the DAISY Consortium, South African Library for the Blind and, especially, their Mini Libs service in local communities.

Kathy Teague and Wendy Taylor, Librarians, RNIB National Library Service, UK

Kathy and Wendy are responsible for coordinating the Cataloguing Working Group of the IFLA LPD’s Global Accessible Library Project and are involved in the acquisition of a new library management system by RNIB NLS. They wish to visit the Celia Library in Helsinki, Finland to study their implementation of the new FRBR bibliographic model [Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records] which permits the assigning of relationships between different accessible formats of the same work. Celia belongs to the Finnish DAISY Consortium and is the first specialist library in this field to implement this model. Their visit has clear potential to enhance the DAISY Consortium member RNIB’s services and worldwide developments. Ulverscroft has offered 2,700 to fund this visit.

Yasmine Youssef, Librarian at the Taha Hussein Library for the Blind and Print Disabled at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, Egypt.

Yasmine is the library’s specialist in the production of DAISY books and wishes to visit DAISY South Africa to provide expert assistance in their development of DAISY production and to understand the challenges posed by accommodating 11 official languages. This opportunity will enhance her ability to develop services at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina (Associate Member of the DAISY Consortium) and to assist developments in other Arabic speaking countries. Yasmine has been awarded 2,550 Pounds GB to undertake this visit.

More information and the full list of award recipients can be found on the Ulverscroft Foundation website.

The 4th European eAccessibility Forum will be held in Paris on April 12, 2010 and will provide an opportunity to hear first-hand about the eAccessibilty of public services from users with disabilities, public organizations and industries. The speakers are specialists involved in organizations representing users and consumers with disabilities, research organizations and companies operating in Europe or worldwide. The conference program is available on the 4th European eAccessibility Forum website.

The Final Draft of the DAISY Online Delivery Protocol Specification is available from the DAISY Consortium website Projects area.

The DAISY Online Delivery protocol is a web service API that facilitates the delivery of digital resources from service providers to end users. The protocol features a core set of operations that can be configured to enable a variety of different download models, making it a flexible and lightweight solution to the growing need for online delivery of published content.

The Working Group believes that the development of the specification is now complete and is seeking feedback through the public review phase, from February 18 to March 20, 2010. Please provide comments and implementation reports to the Working Group through the public feedback form available on the DAISY Consortium website at http://www.daisy.org/contact.

AMIS is an open source, self-voicing software program that you can use to read DAISY books. The DAISY Consortium is pleased to announce that thanks to the efforts of the Swedish Library of Talking Books and Braille (TPB), AMIS is now also available in Swedish. You can download it on the AMIS project page of the DAISY Consortium website.

DAISY Member Vision Australia's Accessible Information Solutions (AIS) team is working with the CFA (Country Fire Authority) to ensure their publications are accessible to people with disabilities. They have produced the FireReady Kit and seven other publications about bushfires. The FireReady Kit has been dispatched to all people who are members of Vision Australia library and reside in bush fire prone areas. CDA and DAISY versions were produced and 1350 CDs have been delivered to date. More information is available on the Vision Australia website.

On February 3rd, 2010 National Talking Newspapers and Magazines (NTN and M) officially joined the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) Group. NTN and M provide national newspapers and magazines in the UK on tape, CD, DAISY CD and via MP3 download as well as in digital full-text format by e-mail for blind, partially sighted and other print disabled people. Lesley-Anne Alexander, Chief Executive of RNIB said: "This is a positive step for both organisations, reinforcing our commitment to blind and partially sighted people's right to read. By joining the RNIB Group, NTN and M can continue to develop their excellent service and increase the number of people they are able to reach." Details are available on the RNIB website.

Worcester, February 1st, 2009 -- DAISY Member Dolphin Computer Access has today announced the availability of EasyConverter v.5 for only £1 or $1 per student. Marking a move away from limited on demand provision, the new low cost per student approach enables educators to provide an environment where teaching professionals, support staff and students themselves can create materials in MP3, large print, DAISY talking book and Braille formats. Learners with low vision, blindness, low literacy, dyslexia and other difficulties are set to benefit. Details are available in the Dolphin Computer Access announcement.

The Special Library for the Blind and Visually Impaired of Srpska is an organization whose primary goal is to inform and educate blind and visually impaired people and provide opportunities for them to participate in cultural activities. They are also actively involved in the development and promotion of library activities in the Republic of Srpska. More information is available in the member entry on the DAISY Consortium website.

The DAISY Pipeline is a cross-platform, open source transformation utility, supporting conversion to and from a wide variety of file formats. A new maintenance release of the DAISY Pipeline (v20100125) is now available. It includes numerous improvements, bug fixes and new contributions:

• New scripts for PEF/Braille production (DTBook to PEF, DTBook to Text, PEF splitter/merger)
• New script for OpenDocument Text to DTBook conversion
• New script for DTBook to DAISY 3 Text-Only production, implemented in Java
• New script for DTBook to DAISY 3 Text-Only production (Beta version), implemented in XSLT
• Several localization improvements, including better support for Finnish, Norwegian and Japanese in the TTS Narrator script

Download links are available on the DAISY Pipeline project page or on the DAISY Pipeline development site.

Please use the DAISY Pipeline forum to give us feedback or request support. The DAISY Pipeline team wants to thank all the contributors and bug reporters, your feedback is always much appreciated.

12th International Conference on Computers Helping People with Special Needs will take place July 14-16, 2010 at Vienna University of Technology in Austria. Call for papers deadline is February 1st, 2010. Details are available on the ICCHP conference website.

The 25th Annual International Technology & Persons with Disabilities Conference (CSUN) is approaching. The Early Bird Conference Registration Deadline is January 22nd, 2010. Please register on the CSUN website by this date for the early bird discounted conference registration fee of $375. For more information on the 2010 CSUN Conference visit the Program Overview or Venue page.

Free DAISY software player AMIS 3.1 is now available in Japanese! All different translations have been upgraded. Currently available: language packs in Chinese, Tamil, Australian English, French, Afrikaans, Norwegian (Bokmål), Norwegian (Nynorsk), Icelandic and Japanese. Stay tuned for more: Spanish (Latin America) language pack will be released soon and added to the AMIS in Different Languages page on the DAISY Consortium website.