DAISY News

DAISY Member RFB&D is hosting a Media Roundtable with their National Achievement Awards winners in Washington, DC on February 2, 2010. The 90-minute mid-day session will feature testimonials from individuals who are blind or severely dyslexic and have flourished on their educational paths, thanks to the crucial access to textbooks and assistive audio technology that RFB&D provides. Several students will be honored at RFB&D’s 50th annual National Achievement Awards on February 3rd. The roundtable participants include:

• Michael Jernigan, a Marine blinded by a roadside bomb in Fallujah, Iraq, is now thriving in college and speaking out for veteran wounded warriors hoping to rekindle their education.
• Alyssa Lang, diagnosed with dyslexia in her junior year in high school, struggled and compensated for years by literally memorizing every word she encountered. She graduated with a 4.31 GPA and now attends Notre Dame.
• 37-year old Monty Anderson, undeterred by blindness, finished his double master's degree in psychology and behavioral neuroscience – and is now a high achiever in law school.
• Michele Shepherd, diagnosed with dyslexia at 35, endured debilitating stigma and ridicule as a child, and is now making up for lost time with passionate advocacy and public speaking to kids in Virginia school systems.

Also, two nationally recognized education authorities will share perspectives:

• James Cibulka, President of the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE), is the father of a dyslexic daughter.
• Jane West, Sr. VP for Policy and Programs at the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE), is an acknowledged authority on education and disability issues.

Details are available on the RFB&D website.

The Association for the Blind of Western Australia working with CUCAT at Curtin University has released Olearia 1.1, an open source DAISY playback software for Apple Macintosh computers. Olearia can be downloaded from the following URL: http://code.google.com/p/olearia/.

New in 1.1:

• Sparkle Framework for self updating has been added
• Norwegian localization now available
• An issue where the preference window toolbar icons did not appear in languages other than English, has been fixed.

The ATIA Conference features the latest products and services, showcasing more than 125 exhibitors in one of the most comprehensive exhibitions in the industry. Several DAISY Consortium members participate each year. Participants can meet one-on-one with leading assistive technology suppliers to get their questions answered and get hands-on experience with the newest technologies. More than 275 educational sessions and hands-on labs have been planned. More information is available on the ATIA 2010 Conference website.

gh, LLC announced the development and release of ReadHear™ Mac, the only fully-featured commercial Digital Talking Book player available for the Mac. ReadHear Mac provides access to books and other text materials for those who have low-vision, blindness, learning disabilities, or mobility impairments. ReadHear Mac allows Mac users with disabilities to experience the features of gh PLAYER, while still being able to utilize accessibility features available in Mac OS X. Details are available in the gh, LLC press release. Free trial version is available for download at the gh, LLC website.

RoboBraille was named winner of the prestigious annual BETT Award, a recognition of excellence in educational ICT. The Danish team behind the RoboBraille service won the prize together with their British partner, The Royal National College for the Blind (RNBC). RoboBraille is an email-based free service capable of translating electronic documents into either synthetic speech or contracted Braille. RoboBraille is a Danish invention, introduced by DAISY Member Synscenter Refsnaes (the Danish Centre for Visual Impairment) and Sensus ApS. Details are available on the RoboBraille website.

Free webinar titled "Accessible Android Smartphone" is scheduled for January 20th at 2 PM Eastern. Presenter Steve Jacobs is the CEO of Apps4Android and President of the IDEAL Group, Inc. Apps4Android is an IDEAL Group subsidiary corporation, dedicated to developing free and low-cost, high-quality Android applications that enhance the quality-of-life, independence, and employability of individuals with disabilities. This webinar is open to the public and is free, but participants need to register in advance so they can receive login instructions. Registration is available at the EASI Webinar page: http://easi.cc/clinic.htm.

PHOENIX, Jan. 11 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The National Federation of the Blind (NFB), the American Council of the Blind (ACB), and Arizona State University (ASU), today announced a settlement agreement resolving litigation filed by NFB and ACB against the Arizona Board of Regents (ABOR) and ASU. The lawsuit arose from the university's participation in a pilot program using the Kindle DX, a dedicated device for reading electronic books, or e-books, developed by Amazon.com, Inc. The NFB and ACB alleged that the Kindle DX was inaccessible to blind students and thus violated federal law. ABOR and ASU denied and continue to deny any violations of the law. More information is available in the news release.

Olympus Imaging Corporation is the world leader in the development, manufacturing, and sales of digital voice recorders. Olympus strives to create value and help people around the world. More information is available in the Olympus Imaging Corporation entry in our Members area.

With the focus on dynamic content these days - whether web pages, data, or technical documentation, content management systems have become critical in the management and organization of various types of content. The DAISY Consortium, among many other organizations, has switched to an Open Source Content Management System. We have converted the DAISY Consortium website to the Drupal platform, distributed under the GNU General Public License. It is used as a back-end system for many different types of websites, ranging from personal blogs to Enterprise collaboration and knowledge management platforms. We will add more features to our site and work on redesign as we reorganize content. We will keep you informed as we continue to roll out updates.

Please bear with us during this process. As any Internet or computer user knows, technical glitches can and do happen. We will spend the next week finding those glitches and correcting them. Please provide input, report your problems and let us know of any accessibility issues by using the Contact form on the DAISY Consortium website at http://www.daisy.org/contact.

Over 800 books have been requested by DAISY Member Bookshare's many members and volunteers that are not part of their student population. Your donation will help ensure that Bookshare's non-student community is served with the books they desire and wish for. Give the gift of accessibility! Details are available on the Bookshare website.

The DAISY Consortium announces the new release of AMIS software. AMIS is a free, open source software application for reading DAISY books. It is self-voicing, therefore specialized screen-reading software is not needed.

This release includes the following improvements:

• Audio speed can be slowed down without pitch distortion
• Enhanced DAISY 3 text display, including images
• Support for DAISY 2.02 multivolume books
• Stability improvements

AMIS 3.1 can be downloaded from the AMIS project page.

"For persons with disabilities, the Commission believes that the problems of accessibility could be improved at the European level in a relatively short timeframe through goodwill and constructive discussions among stakeholders. It is for this reason that it has set up a Stakeholder Dialogue for the visually impaired and reading disabled. The first meeting of the stakeholder dialogue took place in Brussels on December 4th, 2009. This first meeting of the Stakeholder Dialogue brought together representatives from the European Blind Union, the European Federation of Publishers, the European Writers Council, the Publishers Licensing Agency, the International Federation of Reproduction Rights Organisations, the European Disability Forum, DEDICON (which provides information and works in accessible formats) and various European Commission departments."

December 14th is the first day of a five day meeting of the WIPO SCCR, being held in Geneva. The main topic of discussion will be copyright limitations and exceptions. In the center of the limitations and exceptions discussion will be a debate and a decision on how to proceed on the proposal to negotiate a new WIPO treaty for persons who are blind, visually impaired or have other disabilities.

"Cambridge University Press has signed an agreement with a charity for the visually impaired in India, which will eventually give millions of readers with a visual impairment unique access to a range of educational materials. There are over 10 million visually impaired people in India and for many of them the only way they can access content in books is by other people reading to them.