Copyright: DAISY News is the intellectual property of the DAISY Consortium. It is hereby placed in the public domain. DAISY News may be freely copied as an eText document or reproduced in accessible formats for people who are blind or print-disabled. Individual articles may be republished for nonprofit purposes; but full attribution should be given to the DAISY Consortium, DAISY News, and the article's author. For-profit organizations interested in reprints should send email to info@mail.daisy.org to discuss permission procedures.
Our vision is that all published information is available to people with print disabilities, at the same time and at no greater cost, in an accessible, feature-rich, navigable format.
Our mission is to develop the international standard and implementation strategies for the production, exchange and use of Digital Talking Books in both developed and developing countries, with special attention to integration with mainstream technology to ensure access to information for people with print disabilities.
Skip the Table of Contents and go to the first articleSince our last newsletter, distributed in March, the Consortium has been quite busy. We participated in CSUN and held our own DAISY Conference in Amsterdam. The DAISY For All Project was launched in April, funded by a grant from the Nippon Foundation. At the General Meeting in Amsterdam in May, the next President was elected. Elsebeth Tank from the Danish National Library for the Blind (DBB) will take office in 2004. The Board has also chosen George Kerscher to fill the position of Secretary General.
We have moved forward with the implementation of skippability in DAISY 2.02, and a new release candidate for the DAISY 2.02 Validator was recently made available. Please be sure to read Lynn Leith's article about the value of validation, and download the DAISY 2.02 Validator today!
As I compiled this issue of DAISY News, I found myself wondering: "am I providing Consortium Members and Friends with the information they want?" If you have suggestions regarding content you would like to see in an upcoming newsletter, please feel free to contact me using the Webmaster email address found at the top of the newsletter. If there is information you would like to have, then I am sure others would find it of value, too. I welcome your feedback.
Dear DAISY Consortium Members and Friends:
At this year's General meeting, we elected a new president for 2004 – 2007. I am very happy to welcome Elsebeth Tank as the President-Elect, and I think she will be an exellent leader of our association as we move into (as I see it) the organization's third and mature stage.
After all these years I have had the privilege to be involved with DAISY and the eight years I have served as president of the DAISY Consortium, I can look back on extraordinarily fruitful and successful years.
When Stephen King, Hiroshi Kawamura, Kjell Hanson and I started to dream of a worldwide network to develop a de facto standard built on DAISY, we surely did not know what we were doing! The first years were extremely thrilling, and the close work together with Labyrinten, Plextor, Visuaide, and the widened group of Members in the Consortium made us soon feel unbelievably confident that we were on the right track.
The first five years, beginning in 1993, from Falköping to Sigtuna, I think we can call the pioneer and visionary years with people working with dedication for the establishment of DAISY – as standard and in reality. I want to draw portraits of a few of the pioneers to share the story with you before I leave as president and leave my seat on the DAISY Consortium Board.
Many of the pioneers started working for DAISY long before the establishment of the Consortium. Kjell was the first of the pioneers. He was in charge of TPB's service to university students with print disabilities. It was his impatience with the hopeless conditions for reading that started it all. He got money in 1992/1993 – 1994/1995 for a project to find a digital and better way to read, and he found Lars Sönnebo and Jan Lindholm at Labyrinten in Falköping Sweden. Very soon DAISY was born and the structured reading in digital talking books was invented. Lars and Jan built the foundation we all are pursuing. The specification was published and presented at an ICCHP conference in Vienna, and DAISY started making its way out in to the world.
Another important pioneer was Mr. Ikeda at Plextor Corporation. He was the real brave man believing in DAISY the minute he saw her! And, of course, it was the support from Mr. Kaneko, Plextor's President, that made the realization of the DAISY player possible.
Hiroshi Kawamura played (and still plays) the most important role as the one who makes things come to reality. He introduced, encouraged and inspired important decision-makers in Japan and also the members of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) Section of Libraries for the Blind. The world field trial 1996 – 1997 of DAISY.1 books using the first Plextalk player was a triumph for Hiroshi and the Japanese Government. People in 30 countries were involved in testing and most of them were thrilled by the new technique.
RNIB (now Royal National Institute of the Blind) representatives have also been very active and important "networkers" from the beginning. Stephen King introduced DAISY to the European Blind Union (EBU) where he chaired the Technical Committee. The EBU's requirements on new digital talking books were very important for the DAISY specification. Stephen built up the respectability for DAISY and was the architect of the formation of the DAISY Consortium.
In May 1996, the DAISY Consortium was formed by the brave six pioneer organizations. There were TPB together with the Swedish Association for the Visually Impaired, SRF, RNIB, Japanese Association of Libraries for the Blind, ONCE, Swiss Library for the Blind and Visually impaired, and The Dutch Library for Visually and Print Handicapped Students and Professionals, SVB. I was elected chairman of the Consortium as a reverence to TPB and that TPB donated DAISY for further development to the consortium.
During the autumn of that year, the German association of Talking Book Libraries joined, and during 1997, The Australian/New Zealand Agencies, Recording for the Blind & Dyslexic, and the Danish National Library for the blind all took this important step to become Full Members of the DAISY Consortium. The good reason for this was what happened in Sigtuna (another small Swedish town) where the file format was discussed and changed to a standard format. At this important meeting in May 1997 arranged by Hiroshi, the real standard work could begin. At the same time, the Consortium Board saw that the Consortium needed a professional staff, as the work load for some of the Full Members was becoming rather heavy.
In August 1997, George Kerscher was elected manager for The DAISY Consortium, and in October an Executive Committee was elected (Chris Day, Kjell Hansson, Hiroshi Kawamura, and Lino Rios Mejias). Associated Members started to join from all over the world. Gilles Pepin of VisuAide in Canada also belongs to these brave pioneers offering this still very small market a new DAISY player, Victor.
1998 – 2003 have been the six years of establishing a standard for production, DAISY.2, for implementation and distribution. Training, communication and marketing have become vital action points and part of the daily DAISY agenda. George Kerscher has been extremely important for the success, and his vital and unbelievable capacity has lead to big steps forward. We have been able to enlarge the staff, primarily with respect to technical development and training. We have been very lucky finding Lynn Leith, Markus Gylling, Miki Azuma and now lately Jennifer Sutton. The Consortium of 2003 is quite different from that in 1997. Today, the organization has a responsibility to its members and to all the readers with print disabilities who are counting on us to establish and maintain the standard and the better way to read in all parts of the world.
Quite a bit of time has been devoted to find the best organization of the Consortium that could give the optimal results for the members and also assure that the organization remains open for new Members and Friends. Bernhard Heinser as treasurer, Peter Osborne (RNIB) and Susanne Seidelin (DBB) worked hard as Board Members to form an efficient Consortium with staff supported by a Board and guided by the democratic influence from the General Meeting. New Full Members have joined the Consortium. Also, many Full Members have established national DAISY Consortia, such as the Canadian DAISY Consortium. We are today 12 Full Members with Korean Braille Library as the latest, and the total number of organizations being involved as Full Members is today 55. Some 45 organizations are Associate Members, and the number of Associates increases every month as does the input of new Friends.
Peter has been on the board since the year 2000 and acting Secretary General since last year when he succeeded Bill Jolley. Peter is now leaving the Consortium board and staff due to an extreme work load.
Peter has been very important for the establishment of the DAISY Consortium as an efficient organization. And as he has been in charge of the implementation of DAISY in RNIB, he has also served as inspiration for many cautious actors to think "It is possible!" And Peter himself is a person to love and admire. We will miss Peter's communication skills. Thank you Peter for these years and welcome back whenever you are able to join us!
The hero still going strong is Hiroshi. His indefatigable work on reaching out with DAISY is astonishing and admirable. The DAISY for All project will be the characteristic for the next phase of the DAISY Consortium together with the implementation of the DAISY 3 specification.
I could mention more heroes who have made invaluable contributions to DAISY's development during this first exciting ten years – there are plenty of them and that is so fantastic. That fact, among others, has made these years so rich and important to me. I congratulate Elsebeth Tank on becoming President of this remarkable association called the DAISY Consortium. I wish her all success and happiness in the good company of all these DAISY people!
I was pleased to accept the position of Secretary General of the DAISY Consortium when it was offered to me by the Consortium's Board, and officially confirmed last month in Amsterdam. As most of you know, I have been committed to the goal of making all information accessible in a digital form for many years – starting in the late 1980s with my non-profit organization, Computerized Books for the Blind and Print Disabled, which merged with Recording for the Blind & Dyslexic in 1991 and for several years now as part-time staff to the DAISY Consortium.
As I assume the position of the Secretary General for 75% of my time (continuing to work for RFB&D, as well), I have had occasion to reflect on how I envision my role in this position. With the DAISY 2.02 specification as a stable recommendation, and efforts underway to develop the necessary tools to facilitate a smooth transition to DAISY 3, the ANSI/NISO Z39.86 2002 standard, the Consortium has reached an impressive level of maturity. We have, in fact, experienced unprecedented growth during the first half of this year with some 12 Members and Friends joining our community. I look forward to continued growth in the next few years as we begin to reach out to areas around the world that have not yet had opportunities to embrace DAISY technology.
As we grow, however, I recognize the importance of guiding the Consortium so that current Members and Friends continue to receive the support and information they need in order to implement DAISY production successfully. My focus will be on developing written goals for the Consortium that take this need for balancing growth with maintaining stability. I will also be searching for the necessary resources to enable us to accomplish our goals. To this end, at the General Meeting held recently, goals for 2003 were adopted. You may review them by going to http://www.daisy.org/publications/docs/20030619211001/DAISY_Goals_Combined_from_2003-Work-Plan_v1.html.
Please take the time to consider them. If you have any comments, I welcome your feedback as we turn our attention to the revision of our long-range strategic plan. Send mail to kerscher@montana.com.
During the next year, I will be working with the Board to review and revise our strategic long-range plan. This revised plan will be presented at next year's General Meeting in Zurich. I look forward to the challenge of considering future directions for the DAISY standard and the Consortium. The value of the standard is beginning to be recognized by audio and print publishers outside the field of disability, and we must capitalize on the progress we have made in educating them about the benefits of DAISY as an ideal approach to adding navigation to information systems.
As those of you who attended the DAISY conference saw in various demonstrations, DAISY is a flexible multimedia technology that benefits people with print disabilities (who will always be our primary audience), but innovative implementations of DAISY may certainly be useful to everyone who appreciates different methods for accessing information. We saw particularly exciting demonstrations of how DAISY can be used in a variety of educational settings.
Given the strength and dedication of our community today, my vision of the future of DAISY is, indeed, optimistic. I am enthusiastic about continuing to work with all of you, keeping the lines of communication open, as we promote the standard.
Since our last newsletter, the Consortium has had the pleasure of welcoming many new Members and Friends from around the world. Below is a list of them; the links will take you to their descriptions on the DAISY Web site. We hope you will spend a few moments to read about your new colleagues. Again, we express a warm welcome to all of the organizations and companies that have become affiliated with the DAISY Consortium; we look forward to working with each of you.
Some of you may be especially interested in a project of the National Center on Accessible Media which is "Dedicated to achieving media access equality for people with disabilities." See the link below for more details. The organization is involved in activities to assess multimedia technologies; read more about the Beyond the Text Project by visiting http://ncam.wgbh.org/ebooks.
The DAISY Consortium and some 10 Members and Friends actively promoted DAISY technology at the CSUN conference in March. This year, we were all especially visible with our DAISY signs and artificial daisies as booth decorations. DAISY Members and Friends gave away door prizes regularly, and we even had boxes with daisies on them in which to collect names.
Thanks to many on the staff of Recording for the Blind & Dyslexic for their efforts. Without them, the DAISY community would not have made such a big splash.
This year, there were also two DAISY CDs available which made CSUN Conference program content, menus, and information from Members and Friends available to conference attendees. To read more about our activities, see an article that was posted on the DAISY Web site at http://www.daisy.org/news/news_detail.php?NewsId=92.
Our yearly DAISY Day, held toward the end of the conference, was a great opportunity for vendors to show their new products and for interested conference attendees to be updated on the status of the evolving DAISY specification. Some of the Consortium's unprecedented growth since March is directly attributable to contacts we made at CSUN. What will we do next year? This one will be hard to top!
As those of you who were there know, the DAISY For All Conference held from May 12-14 in Amsterdam was a resounding success, thanks especially to the hard work of our host, FNB. There were approximately 180 attendees representing an impressive number of our Members and Friends.
The two and a half days of the conference, as well as the hands-on sessions and supplemental meetings held on Thursday, May 15, were simply packed with information. We appreciated so many Members' and Friends' eagerness to share updates about products, services, and implementation strategies. Thank you to each presenter and to the exhibitors who made the conference such a rich learning experience.
After the conference, I imagine that we were all a bit tired, but at the same time, judging by the evaluation forms the staff have received, many of you were inspired by what you heard and saw. This was certainly what we all hoped for – that the conference would re-energize all of us. We learned both about others' experiences of implementing in organizations that serve people with print disabilities, but also about the almost limitless applications for DAISY technology when the standard is adopted in other arenas. Indeed, DAISY technology can benefit everyone, and that will become ever more apparent as we work to expand awareness of it worldwide. If you did not attend the conference and would like to review the basic program, please visit http://www.daisy.org/events/conf2003/dc_2003_program.html.
There were some last-minute minor modifications to the program, including an update from the American Printing House for the Blind about its Book Port product which will be released shortly. Also, the Consortium's President-Elect, Elsebeth Tank, made some remarks which are reprinted in this edition of the newsletter. Other highlights of the conference included:
As a first-time DAISY Conference attendee, myself, I was pleased to have a chance to meet so many of you face-to-face and to increase my understanding of what goes on behind the scenes to make DAISY books a reality. What I learned at the conference reinforces my belief that we in the DAISY community must do what we can to share information among ourselves between conferences, especially so that we can support those organizations that are taking their first steps toward implementation.
I am particularly resolved to help others so that each DAISY Member does not have to re-invent the wheel. I hope each of you will continue to share your knowledge with Consortium Members as your time and resources permit. I look forward to helping you do so.
eta@dbb.dk
President-Elect
I have known DAISY since 1998 when I was appointed as director of Danish National Library for the Blind, DBB. In my opinion, it is fair to acknowledge the steps the DAISY Consortium has taken and the results that have been accomplished during this period. The development goes far beyond my expectations back in '98.
In my understanding, DAISY is now known as a successful, highly valued, visionary and cooperative international organization with a wide range of ideas, plans and work to be carried out.
Things don't come easy – that is quite normal, and that goes for the DAISY Consortium as for any other association. We have a lot of problems to tackle and challenges to catch up with. However, we have built a well-working and trustworthy organization, and that, eventually, makes things a lot easier than was the case back in the 1990s when DAISY was established.
At this DAISY conference, we have heard about the migration of digital book collections. Likewise, DAISY – as an organization – will be an object for future migration – as we are going to transition DAISY into a new generation of organizations, within the next couple of years.
It is not only technology that develops – so do organizations – or to put things more accurately – they ought to do so!
At this conference, we have already heard a variety of substantial presentations which help us to get an impression of the complexity of the context that we are part of. Further, the potential of the new technologies that we are so eager to benefit from has been clarified.
All the different roles the Consortium plays and all the obligations we have to cope with together reflect this complexity.
What kind of roles do I see for DAISY, then?
Let me just present them briefly:
Obviously, there is – and will be for many years – a lot of work to be done. The extent to which we will succeed depends on two key issues. One issue concerns the actual way of working. The organization as such has to thrive. People involved need to feel confidence and trust; transparency in the organization is essential. Furthermore, efficiency when it comes to administration as well as economy has to be in focus. We have to cope with these challenges, continuously and be ambitious enough to carry out improvements, whenever possible.
From my point of view, the second essential issue has to do with DAISY's ability to take the right strategic decisions. This also includes the ability to prioritise and to leave less relevant activities behind if the needed resources cannot be allocated. Last, but not least, we have to work constructively together to complete the mission. Together we can enjoy the future progress that DAISY inevitably is going to make. That is nothing but a necessity – simple as that, and personally I am looking forward to working with and for the consortium.
The DAISY for All Project (DFA), funded by the Nippon Foundation, officially kicked off with a face-to-face Coordinating Committee meeting in Amsterdam. Attending the meeting were Hiroshi Kawamura, the DFA Project Manager, Monthian Buntan, Dipendra Manocha, Markku Hakkinen, Marisa DeMeglio, Miki Azuma, George Kerscher, Markus Gylling, and Lynn Leith.
DFA activities for 2003 include Focal Point development in Thailand and India, International Trainers Training, Open Source Development Workshops, and Marketing and Management Support.
DFA will focus on the implementation of DAISY in developing countries. Assistant Managers, Monthian Buntan (Thailand) and Dipendra Manocha (India), will assist the Project Manager to give input from developing countries. They are also in charge of the coordination of DFA activities in each country. Both focal points in Thailand and India will produce and distribute DAISY reading materials. They will also become regional support centers to assist DAISY implementations in neighbouring countries and regions.
Focal Point Development in 2003 will establish a sustainable DAISY production center in Thailand and India. Both will become regional support centers for future focal point development in the following years.
DFA International Trainers Training (DFAITT) will take place in Bangkok on 2-8 August 2003 to train DAISY trainers who will be contributing to people in developing countries.
Two Open Source Development Workshops will be held in 2003: Bangkok in October and Zurich in December in conjunction with the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) which will take place in Geneva;. Markku Hakkinen and Marisa DeMeglio will coordinate these Workshops. The goal of the Workshops is two fold:
The DAISY for All official Home Page will be announced shortly.
As many of you who attended the DAISY Conference in Amsterdam learned, FNB has been working on new methods for making music accessible using DAISY technology. FNB will sponsor a conference on the subject of accessible music to be held on Thursday and Friday, October 2 and 3, in Amsterdam. Though many key speakers have been arranged, there is still some space in the program. Short papers should describe original and significant work in the research and practice of making music accessible. Research case studies, applications, and experiments are particularly welcome. The papers should be written in English and submitted via email to am2003@fnb.nl by 12th of July 2003.
To read more about the plans for the conference, you may subscribe to a newsletter that discusses talking music and will be distributed every two months. Read the first issue at http://projects.fnb.nl/am/NewsletterMay2003.htm. In this newsletter, you will find links to conference registration and the like.
The DAISY 2.02 Validator is a software tool which tests DAISY 2.02 DTBs for conformance to the DAISY 2.02 Specification. The Validator analyzes DAISY 2.02 DTBs and generates a report which contains a list of any problems identified during the validation process. This wonderful and amazing tool (I can say that because I did not develop it) is available to everyone at no charge, that is, to DAISY Consortium Members and non-Members alike. As the DAISY Specification and the Standard move forward and are adopted by governments and commercial content producers, this will ensure that the content they produce is also valid, resulting in more valid DAISY books being available to individuals around the world who are unable to read print.
The 2.02 Validator RC2 is available for download from the DAISY Web site now. Go to http://www.daisy.org/tools/validation.php#val202. Don't just think about it, don't wait for a few weeks because you are too busy right now, go to this URL as soon as you have finished reading DAISY News, and download the Validator.
During the validation process the software program applies a series of conformance tests to the DTB. It compares the data in the DTB to the data that is expected to be present, that is, it compares the data in the DAISY book to the requirements and recommendations of the DAISY 2.02 Specification. The Validator is testing for two things: if the DAISY DTB is readable (if it will play correctly), and if it is conformant. In conformance testing, possible violations to specifications are checked, regardless of their impact on the readability of the book. Information (metadata) such as book identifier or author are mandatory in the Specification, and will be reported as an error if they are missing from a DAISY DTB, however, if they have not been included in the book metadata, there will be no negative impact on how the book plays.
The results of the validation process are divided into two potential groups: errors and warnings. An error is a violation of a requirement within the Specification. A warning is normally neither a violation of a specification requirement, nor a problem that will cause the book to be unreadable when used with a DAISY hardware or software player. Warnings are typically reported when the Validator cannot find data that is defined as "recommended" by the Specification, in other words, a warning can indicate that optional data is missing from the DAISY DTB.
This is perhaps one of the easiest questions about the Validator. The answer is, everyone and anyone who has anything to do with DAISY DTB production, tools, or distribution:
Many, in fact probably most organizations producing DAISY books are retaining an archival copy of their DAISY DTBs. If a book is not conformant, regardless of whether or not it plays in a DAISY player, its longevity is not guaranteed, and, it may or may not be possible to migrate it to the DAISY 3, the ANSI/NISO Z39.86 2002 standard when the time for migration arrives. Specifically, validation ensures:
Before the Validator was available, it was difficult to determine if the books being produced were in fact valid DAISY 2.02 DTBs. Using the Validator allows content producers to identify problems in projects at a very early stage in the production process, saving time and reducing costly repairs. Repairing or reworking problem projects well into the recording stage, or even after recording is complete requires significant time and technical expertise. It is much easier (although still requiring considerable technical knowledge) to correct problems in a DAISY project source file before recording has begun. It is then a relatively simple matter to recreate the project, revalidate, and then begin recording. In some environments with some tools the ncc.html file is created as the book is being recorded. It may be wise to validate the book after the first recording session to ensure that things are in order before additional resources are used.
It may even be possible for some organizations to eliminate costly quality assurance measures that would have been developed because there was no other way of even insuring that a completed DAISY book would play correctly.
Details about installation information and requirements are provided in the Validator Manual which accompanies the software. Also included in the Manual are two sets of instructions for using the tool, the first being a simple and brief outline, the second being a detailed and much more specific explanation. Both the "readme" file and the "help" file which are included with the Validator download provide useful and helpful information and instructions.
The Validator can be used at a stand-alone workstation or in a networked environment, and can be used on a single DAISY book or in a batch mode. In batch mode a number of books can be validated in series without further intervention by the technician or operator.
The validation results can be viewed on screen, or saved as an xhtml document. Reports are not automatically saved. The Validator Report View at the left of the screen displays the list of any failed tests (errors or warnings) identified in the DAISY DTB. When one of these lines is highlighted the "Error View" at the bottom of the screen will display information about the specific test result, and in some cases a suggestion for correcting the problem is provided. When one of the test results is selected (ENTER or double click on the item), the corresponding document (SMIL, XHTML) will be opened in the Document Editor at the right of the screen. In some instances the cursor is positioned at the exact position within that document where the error occurs. The Validator will not fix the problem, but it tells you what the problem is, where it is and sometimes provides information about how it can be corrected.
Section 5.7 of the Validator Manual provides information about using the Validator with a Screen Reader. All graphical items on the screen have hotkeys and menu equivalents so that the information is accessible to individuals using a screen reader.
The DAISY 2.02 Validator is fairly simple to use, however, interpreting and understanding the results of the validation are not as simple. This requires someone who has some technical and/or XML experience.
This of course is a major question, because one way or the other, regardless of the DAISY production tool used, an invalid book will be found at some point. If the reported error is a result of missing required metadata, it is an easy matter to add it to the book, but if it is something other than missing metadata, that's another matter. There are two options. It is possible to edit the file in the Validator Document View, but as mentioned earlier in this article, this requires considerable expertise. The other option is to use the DAISY 2.02 Regenerator which is available for download on the DAISY Web site. The DAISY Regenerator will correct many of the errors known to occur in DAISY DTB and will validate the regenerated book. DAISY 2.0 DTBs are regenerated as DAISY 2.02 DTBs. It will of course not add missing metadata, but that is not the difficult part to correct. There will be an article on the DAISY 2.02 Regenerator in the next issue of DAISY News. I'd like to mention that I'm also a fan of the Regenerator!
There have been many changes in this tool since Beta 1 was made available for testing. Enhancements such as the addition of a 'light mode' and a 'disable audio tests mode' have been added. Errors are no longer classified as either 'critical' and 'non-critical'. There have also been numerous problem fixes incorporated. Full details are provided in the Validator documentation.
Some Issues or concerns still remain, for example, different organizations have varying needs and varying levels of expertise within their employee groups. The 'language' of the Validator results is quite technical, and some organizations may have difficulty interpreting the Validator results. The Manual which accompanies the Validator will be useful to everyone who uses the tool, regardless of level of expertise.
The DAISY Validator is an open source development project. If you are interested in open source development, and in particular in participating in the development of this tool, you can join the validation workgroup within the DAISY Software Initiative. You can find information about the DAISY Software Initiative for Digital Talking Books at: http://dsidtb.sourceforge.net.
You can probably tell by this article that I am a DAISY Validator convert. No producing organization or content creator should be without it. Thank you Markus (Gylling) and TPB for creating and making this wonderful tool available.
If you would like to explore the possibility of having a DAISY training session in your organization, please send email to Lynn Leith, International Training and Technical Support Coordinator, at Lynn.Leith@cnib.ca
There have been a number of new playback devices and tools released in the last few months. Many of you saw new products at CSUN in March and/or at the DAISY Conference in Amsterdam. Since many of these items have already been noted on the DAISY Web site, only brief notes and links that provide more information will be provided here.
Although the following information was distributed recently on DAISY Consortium listservs, we wanted to be sure that everyone who is affected sees it.
The DAISY 2.02 Skippability Recommendation is now ready for implementation in playback devices.
The DAISY 2.02 Skippability Recommendation has been in draft status since December 2002. It has now reached a level of maturity that means that this technology is now ready for implementation in playback devices.
The DAISY Consortium provides the following materials to aid playback developers in implementing support for skippability:
1. The Skippable Structures Recommendation, available from the DAISY specifications page at http://www.daisy.org/publications/specifications.php;
2. Three Sample DTB, available for download at
ftp.daisy.org
user: anonymous
password: anonymous
folder: "skippable."
The DAISY Consortium encourages ALL PLAYBACK DEVICE DEVELOPERS TO REVIEW THE PROVIDED MATERIALS. Note that to be a compliant DAISY 2.01/2.02 playback device, you are not required to support skippability as a feature, but THE PLAYBACK DEVICE IS REQUIRED NOT TO FAIL when encountering skippable structures.
Also note that an extensive part of the Skippable Structures Recommendation discusses the issue of playback device behavior.
To date, the following skippability implementations exist:
We suggest that any further questions regarding implementation details be directed to technical-developments@mail.daisy.org; only those subscribed to the list may post to it. The skippability implementation group (Markus Gylling, George Kerscher, Niels Thögersen, Per Sennels, and Edmar Schut) are also available for correspondence at skip-dev@mail.daisy.org. The skip-dev list is an open list, so anyone may post to it.
Version 2.0 of Structure Modifier, presented at the DAISY for All conference in Amsterdam, is now available.
Structure Modifier is a tool for adding additional content to the source document for a DAISY 2.02 NCC Only Digital Talking Book. It is especially geared towards skippability, making it easy to add the producer notes, sidebars and footnotes as described in the DAISY 2.02 specifications.
The output from the Structure Modifier is compliant with the methods and requirements specified in the DAISY 2.02 Skippable Structures Recommendation from the DAISY Consortium. To download the software, please visit www.ks-huseby.no/daisy/StructMod.
The Vibe is based on a mainstream MP3 player, and it offers DAISY capability. To read more about it, see a press release at http://www.visuaide.com/press_rel_vibe_ang.html. Note that VisuAide has also released another in its line of DAISY reading products, the Victor Reader New Classic. Visit http://www.visuaide.com/index.en.php to learn more about VisuAide.
Version 1.01 of EaseReader, Dolphin's DAISY playback software, is now available. EaseReader is the new DAISY "Audio E-book" software player that is full of unique features that allow DAISY users to gain maximum advantage from their books.
To coincide with this exciting new release, Dolphin Computer Access Ltd have launched a new e-commerce store http://www.dolphinse.com/shop to allow customers to quickly and easily purchase EaseReader online.
To find out more about EaseReader, please visit this page: http://www.dolphinse.com/products/easereader.htm. To request a demonstration CD, please visit go to http://www.dolphinse.com/demos/index.htm.
Dolphin's previous DAISY software player, LpPlayer, has been discontinued and is therefore no longer available in both full and limited versions. Customers who have previously purchased LpPlayer are entitled to email support and updates for 12 months from the date of purchase. Therefore any customer who has purchased LpPlayer or renewed their maintenance agreement with Labyrinten Data AB or Dolphin Audio Publishing, within the last 12 months will be entitled to technical support until the 12-month period expires. We regret that after this period, it will not be possible to renew maintenance agreements for LpPlayer.
This free software player supports DAISY 2.0 and 2.02. Learn more about it and download it at http://tab1.tab.or.th/daisy/.
The Scholar, designed for print disabled users of all ages, is a highly compact DAISY CD Player that also accepts standard CDs and MP3 CDs, and features automatic format detection. Scholar provides instant access to specific page numbers and chapters in the DAISY structure, and includes a full numeric keypad with a "book-marking" feature." As DAISY Consortium Members know, these features are a dramatic improvement over the current analog systems available.
For more information, call toll-free in the U.S. 1-800-828-6107, ext. 7498 or +1 952-887-7498. You may also send email to duplication@telex.com. For more details about the Scholar's features, visit www.telex.com and search for the word "Scholar."
Here is a handy list of DAISY Consortium Web site links and email addresses:
