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 articleIn this issue of DAISY News, you will find a detailed article about the upcoming DAISY conference in Amsterdam. Scheduled to begin after the Consortium's General Meeting, the conference will open in the afternoon of May 12 and continue through May 14. This conference will offer you the opportunity to learn about DAISY implementation in many phases of the launch process. On Thursday, May 15, we will be holding some hands-on workshops, so watch for an email message about them. Also, note that the Accessible Music Conference will be held on May 15-16, and DAISY conference attendees have been offered 30 free registrations. See http://projects.fnb.nl/am/conference.html for more information.
Again in this issue, we feature several DAISY-related tools which are being developed. You will want to begin taking advantage of these tools and the support offered as soon as possible. The developers will welcome your feedback.
Finally, we reproduce some announcements about DAISY's introduction in the mainstream. We know you will be as pleased as we are with mainstream audio publishers' growing recognition of the value of the DAISY standard for all consumers, whether or not they have a print disability.
We encourage you to distribute DAISY News within your organization and to other listservs where you may believe the information will be useful.
Welcome to another edition of DAISY News. We hope you find this issue informative and useful as a tool to help organizations with the implementation of projects to bring about the availability of materials that implement the DAISY specification throughout the world.
The DAISY Consortium Board met in Korea in November, and we would like to thank the Korean Braille Library, our full member organization in Korea, for hosting our meeting and making the Board feel so welcome. Amongst the important decisions resulting from the meeting was an agreement to establish a working group to develop the concept of a global library. The group will begin to consider the detail of this strategy, and further information will become available shortly.
The Consortium continues to work with many international bodies to bring about acceptance of the standard and greater understanding of the right to accessible information for all. The United Nations world summit on the information society is currently being planned, and the Consortium has been represented at pan-European and Asia/Pacific preparatory conferences. Our contributions have been well received, and the proceedings from both conferences will contain information relating to the need for accessible information for people with print disabilities. We will continue to monitor and participate in the development of the summit with a view to achieving our goal of having the right to accessible information referenced in the outcomes from the summit.
The General Meeting to be held in Amsterdam on May 12 will see the election of our next President who will take office in January 2004. The Board has reviewed the Articles of Association, and considered the issue further at its February meeting. Information from candidates will be made available to the membership prior to the General Meeting, and I look forward to your support in making this important decision for the Consortium.
Finally, we are always keen to have news from you concerning your plans for implementation, so please make use of the Web site to provide us with any information you would like to share with other members.
Are you holding a conference, presenting, or exhibiting at one in the next several months where DAISY will be featured? If so, tell us about it, and we will be happy to put it on the DAISY Consortium's Web site calendar.
Use our information submission form, and choose "announcement for calendar" in the combo box. We look forward to supporting your efforts to publicize the DAISY specification.
Over the last few months, the Consortium's Personal Assistant, Louise Hallsworth, has been contacting Members and Friends to ask for information to update the Web site. Thanks to all those who responded so enthusiastically.
If you did not have a chance to respond, feel free to do so at any time. We welcome the chance to keep the site's content current. Just go to Members and Friends and look for your entry. Send corrections to louise.hallsworth@rnib.org.uk.
Even if you have updated your information recently, why not take a quick glance through our growing group of DAISY supporters? You might be surprised to learn about what others are doing as they implement the DAISY specification.
During the last few months, FNB in the Netherlands and the DAISY staff have been making plans for the DAISY Conference. Perhaps you have seen the call for papers and some announcements for it. If you haven't yet decided whether you will attend, now is the time to make that decision and register - you will not want to miss this event.
FNB will be pleased to give you a warm welcome to Amsterdam where the DAISY Consortium's General Meeting will be held on the morning of Monday, May 12. Following the General Meeting, the conference will open at 2:00 PM and continue through 6:00 PM on Wednesday, May 14. On Thursday, May 15, we are making plans to hold several "hands-on workshops" of a more technical nature, so many of you will not want to miss them. As arrangements for these workshops are finalized, information will be posted to Consortium listservs, so stay tuned.
Amsterdam is an extremely popular city for tourists, particularly in the spring time. FNB has therefore arranged for blocks of rooms for conference attendees at a number of nearby hotels, however these rooms, at special rates, are only available until the end of March. If you are planning to attend, we urge you to register for the conference and book your room today so that you will have a good chance of getting a room that is close to the conference venue. To register, visit www.daisy.org/events/conf2003/registration.php, and to book your room, go to www.daisy.org/events/conf2003/accommodations.php.
The DAISY Consortium's first technical conference was held in 2001 at the CSUN Conference in Los Angeles. There were many excellent presentations, and attendees overwhelmingly found the sessions worthwhile. In the last two years, developments have occured, changes have been made, implementations are underway, and there is much information to share. As the first Technical Conference was held in North America, it was felt that the second should be held in Europe, and FNB kindly agreed to host the event. Although there will be many technical updates and information, it was agreed that more general information about related developments around the world would be of interest to our members and others who may wish to attend. The first day or so of the conference will contain presentations of a more general nature.
We have received many responses to our call for papers, and the evolving program promises to be as exciting and packed with information as the last conference was. Thanks to all of you who have expressed interest in presenting. Papers received so far cover a wide spectrum of issues such as establishing volunteer recording capabilities and using a variety of DAISY-related tools. Also the first experiences of a number of organizations that have started with the roll-out of their services will be highlighted and discussed. We are in the process of organizing the program, and we will be sending individual acceptance letters shortly. Other topics we are hoping to cover include an overview of copyright issues worldwide, the MultiReader Project, and perhaps some demonstrations of new implementations of text-to-speech. The still tentative, but most up-to-date version of the Conference Program is just a click away..
Not only will you hear from experts about the latest developments in DAISY production techniques, but you will also have the chance to visit our exhibit area. The Consortium is planning to assemble and display a collection of packaging options. Determining what packaging is best suited (and most reasonably priced) for shipping DAISY books has been a more difficult process than expected for many of our members. Drop by this display. You may get some ideas that will make it a little easier to decide what container you will use to distribute books. We will be contacting organizations who we know have implemented and asking them to bring samples to the Conference. As the conference approaches, we will be reminding those of you who have them to bring samples with you. If we don't call you, and you are shipping DAISY books on CD, please bring samples to the Conference, and we will include them in the display.
As you would imagine, DAISY Friends will also be exhibiting at the conference. To date, we have reserved space for VisuAide, Telex Communications, Inc., Dolphin Computer Access, Ltd., ALVA, and Otari Europe GmbH. We look forward to hearing from other DAISY Members and Friends, and we are contacting additional companies that we know will be of interest to attendees. Visit the exhibits page for the latest news.
Of course, a conference also provides opportunities for networking with colleagues. You will have plenty of chances to socialize at evening events, such as the one being sponsored by VisuAide, and during the two-hour lunch breaks we have scheduled. Organizations or companies interested in sponsoring a lunch or an evening event may contact Maarten Verboom MVerboom@fnb.nl and Jorrit Timmermans jtimmermans@theprojectnetwork.nl to make inquiries.
If you are able to spend some extra time in Amsterdam either before or after the conference, we have provided some links to assist you with site-seeing and entertainment. Take a few minutes to visit the main conference Web page and explore the links from that page to see what Amsterdam has to offer.
This year's conference theme is "DAISY For All." When we chose this theme, we were thinking about consumers with all kinds of print disabilities and DAISY in the mainstream, but "DAISY for All" also means DAISY for each and every one of you. Each of you makes a valuable contribution to promoting information access, and the conference is most certainly the place where you can be reminded that you and your organization are not alone. What you do to promote digital access makes a difference as we work together to promote DAISY as "a better way to read."
We look forward to seeing you in Amsterdam where we will have a great time sharing experiences and learning about developments in the implementation of the DAISY specification. If you have questions about the conference, please send them to daisy-conference-inquiries@mail.daisy.org>. See you in May in Amsterdam!
We would like to draw your attention to the Accessible Music Conference, which is being organized by FNB to be held on the 15th and 16th of May in Amsterdam. Talking Music will be launched at the conference, as well as the renewed Miracle database of music in alternative formats. See http://projects.fnb.nl/am/conference.html for more information.
FNB and the DAISY Consortium have arranged that there will be 30 free registrations available for DAISY Conference participants. If you are participating in the DAISY Conference and you're interested in attending this Accessible Music Conference for free, please register at http://projects.fnb.nl/am/registration.php. After you have registered, in order to request one of the free spaces for DAISY conference attendees, send an email to am2003@fnb.nl. Please be sure to state that you are a registered delegate for the DAISY conference. Remember that there are 30 free registrations available, so if you plan to attend, reserve your space soon.
PALO ALTO, Calif., March 04, 2003 - Today Bookshare.org, an online library of accessible digital books for people with disabilities, announced an agreement with O'Reilly & Associates, a leading publisher of computer books, to make digital versions of O'Reilly books available worldwide to qualifying users with disabilities.
Bookshare.org (www.bookshare.org) is a subscription service that provides an extensive online library of accessible digital books to people with severe visual, reading, and mobility disabilities. The service, which was created by Benetech, the leading technology nonprofit in the Silicon Valley, operates under a copyright exemption in US law allowing the redistribution of copyrighted works in specialized accessible formats for people with qualifying disabilities.
Under the agreement, O'Reilly & Associates will transfer digital copies of its books to Bookshare.org, which will convert the books into accessible formats and make them available to qualifying subscribers in the US. In addition, O'Reilly has granted Benetech rights to provide the books in accessible formats to qualifying users from other countries, the initial step in a planned expansion into providing accessible digital books internationally.
"This is truly a landmark event in the struggle to make books accessible to people with disabilities," said Benetech CEO Jim Fruchterman. "Tim O'Reilly's visionary contribution will make it easy for people with print-related disabilities worldwide to access his outstanding collection of technical books."
"For years, we've done our best to make our books available to disabled customers on request," said O'Reilly founder and CEO Tim O'Reilly. "After overcoming the technical hurdles, the greater challenge was keeping up with the requests. Benetech's Bookshare.org will give our efforts a real boost through their expert assistance on both the technical and administrative fronts. This partnership builds on Bookshare.org's expertise in providing accessible formats and the XML conversion tools O'Reilly developed to support our online Safari Bookshelf. I'm quite pleased that we'll be able to make O'Reilly books available worldwide through the Bookshare.org service."
Bookshare.org offers a collection of more than 12,000 accessible digital books to its subscribers. The books are protected by a comprehensive digital rights management system, which was designed in collaboration with the Association of American Publishers and features extensive controls, including file encryption, watermarks, fingerprinting and a security watch program.
Information on Bookshare.org and Benetech
Bookshare.org is a project of Benetech, an innovative Silicon Valley nonprofit that develops technology projects to address pressing social issues in areas such as disability, human rights, literacy, education and the digital divide. Many technologies have compelling social applications that are not developed because such efforts do not meet investors financial expectations. Benetech specifically pursues endeavors with a strong social, rather than financial, rate of return on investment, bringing commercial technology and private sector management techniques to bear in creating innovative solutions to difficult social challenges.
Information on O'Reilly
O'Reilly & Associates is the premier information source for leading-edge computer technologies. The company's books, conferences, and web sites bring to light the knowledge of technology innovators. O'Reilly books, known for the animals on their covers, occupy a treasured place on the shelves of the developers building the next generation of software. O'Reilly conferences and summits bring alpha geeks and forward-thinking business leaders together to shape the revolutionary ideas that spark new industries. From the Internet to XML, open source, .NET, Java and web services, O'Reilly puts technologies on the map.
Media Contacts
Brendan Nyhan
The Benetech Initiative
Telephone: (202) 588-8269
Email: brendan@benetech.org
Website: www.bookshare.org
Sara Winge
O'Reilly & Associates
Telephone: (707) 827-7109
Email: sara@oreilly.com
Website: www.oreilly.com
Recent changes to the Support area of our Web site include:
Since the December 2002 issue of DAISY News, our Trainers team which has worked diligently testing and reviewing LpStudio/Pro candidates, has tested and evaluated three new release candidates. A significant change in the way LpPro handles entities was made late in 2002, and this change, although necessary to achieve the required end result, has caused some delays in getting 1.6.X to our members.
Recently you should have received an email announcing the availability of LpStudio/Pro 1.6.3. Significant changes and improvements have been made to LpStudio/Pro since 1.5.77 was made available in July 2002. LpStudio/Pro 1.6.3 produces fully DAISY 2.02 compliant books, as can be seen when books created in this release are validated with the DAISY 2.02 Validator. This official release of LpStudio/Pro incorporates all of the agreed upon features and functions as detailed in the DAISY 2.02 specification.
LpStudio/Pro 1.6.3 is now available on the DAISY Web site for download. The Spanish translation of the prompts is also available in the download area. Many thanks to ONCE for completing the translation so that it could be available at the same time as this official release candidate.
Also available for download on our Web site are the DAISY 2.02 Validator, Release Candidate 1 and the DTBD Checker. As a member of the DAISY Consortium, you are entitled to download these software tools for DAISY book production. Used in conjunction with each other, these three DAISY tools will help you to insure that your DAISY books are valid and complete.
Plans are underway to update the DAISY Basic Training Manual to incorporate all of the changes that have been made to LpStudio/Pro since the Manual was last revised in August 2001.
Intensive work and testing have also been done by Miki Azuma with Sigtuna DAR 3. Numerous changes have been made to insure that Sigtuna DAR 3 output is fully DAISY 2.02 compliant.
In late February and March, the Sigtuna DAR 3 Training Manual will be updated to incorporate these changes. With the kind permission of JSRPD this updated Manual will be made available on the DAISY website for download by members.
This simple to use DAISY 2.02 NCC (ToC) book production tool is also going through some fine tuning. The MyStudio PC Guidelines will be updated and expanded, again in late February and March. JSRPD is also kindly allowing the Consortium to make these updated Guidelines available to DAISY members on the website.
On December 23rd, Markus Gylling sent an email announcing the availability of the first release candidate of the DAISY 2.02 Validator to the DAISY Support, Technical Developments, Trainers, and XML Techniques lists. It was almost like an early holiday season gift. If your organization has not yet downloaded this tool, you should do so as soon as possible. The first version of the support manual is included with the files in the download. Those of you not yet using the DTBD Checker in conjunction with the DAISY Validator, may want to also download the DTBD Checker. As a member of the DAISY Consortium, you are entitled to download these software tools for DAISY book production. Used in conjunction with each other, these two DAISY tools will help you to insure that your DAISY books are valid and complete.
A number of "hands-on" sessions are being planned for Thursday May 15, the day immediately following the upcoming DAISY Conference to be held in Amsterdam. These will be designed for individuals who are actively involved in the production of DAISY books.
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
Again, in this issue, we would like to provide you with information about tools that can support your DAISY production. We offer this information only to assist you; the Consortium cannot be held responsible for the accuracy or validity of the representations of products and services mentioned.
Structure Modifier: A tool for preparing the source document for a NCC Only book before project generation. The main feature is to add skippable elements to the source, compliant with the method described in the DAISY 2.02 Skippable Structures Recommendation.
For more information: www.ks-huseby.no/daisy/StructMod
Status : Freeware
Interface: English
Available: Spring 2003
Contact: Per Sennels per.sennels@statped.no
Structure Modifier is a tool for preparing NCC only source documents for digital talking books. As such, it has been available since last winter, and it was presented at the DAISY General Meeting in Toronto in May, 2002. Unfortunately, no tools have been available to actually produce a DAISY book with skippable elements.
Now, with the "DAISY 2.02 Skippable Structures Recommendation" from the DAISY Consortium," available at www.daisy.org/publications/drafts.php, the situation has really changed. This recommendation describes in detail production of DAISY 2.02 books with skippable footnotes, page numbers, sidebars and producer notes. The necessary tool for modifying the DTB file set, will also be delivered from the Consortium, under the name "Skippability Tweakerr."
The possibility of enhancing the books with skippable elements also introduces new challenges concerning markup of the source documents, especially for NCC only books. Until now, the only elements needed in such books have been headings, and page numbers, a task that the Structure Editor, part of LpStudio/PRO, is dedicated to. But now, with skippability, we must not only add the skippable elements themselves, but also the continuation element, following a skippable element. The continuation element is necessary, as it will be the element to navigate to when skipping parts of the book, see the DAISY 2.02 Skippable Structures Recommendation for details and examples.
Structure Modifier will be the tool to handle all this:
The work of making Structure Modifier compliant with the markup requirements in the DAISY 2.02 Skippable Structures Recommendation, is in progress, and hopefully the tool will be available during Spring 2003.
The Structure Modifier will be available free of charge to members of the DAISY Consortium.
Please visit www.ks-huseby.no/daisy/ StructMod for more information.
Go digital with converting environment and know-how from the Danish National Library for the Blind (DBB).
DBB began converting to DAISY in February 2002. In spring 2003 DBB will have converted its entire collection of talking books, and is thus prepared to launch a digital loan.
DBB offers to convert audio collections at DBB in Denmark. A suitable package deal for customers who do not want to worry about how to convert their collection to a digital format.
As a craftsmans deal, DBB offers to build an installation at the customer's place. DBB guarantees a fully functional installation and training of staff on location.
a2digital features:
For more information, see http://www.dbb.dk/English/a2digital.php or contact Head of IT and Finance: Thomas K. Christensen
The STD editor (Structured Text Document editor) enables a user with little or no skills in mark up languages to produce XML and HTML documents valid to the standard for Digital Talking Books (both DAISY 2.02 and ANSI/NISO Z39.86-2002).
The STD editor facilitates the generation of master-files in XML for any production of structured documents: e-books in HTML, source-files for Digital Talking Books, well-structured files for the Internet etc.
For more information, see http://www.dbb.dk/Software/ or contact Marketing coordinator Jakob B. Rasmussen
Generate Digital Talking Books using synthetic speech with the STEB generator (Synthetic Talking E-Book generator). The production process is very fast. It takes approximately 1 hour to generate 8 hours of recording with synthetic speech. Audiobooks with synthetic speech are particularly well-suited for products like reference books, newspapers, indexes, manuals, etc. The STEB generator needs very little human interaction which means a very short production time at a very low cost.
The STEB generator uses an XML file as a source. In addition to the STEB generator a speech synthesizer will be required.
For more information, see http://www.dbb.dk/Software/ or contact Marketing coordinator Jakob B. Rasmussen
The FNB started in April 2002 with the production of Study and Professional Lectures using the DAISY specification. For the first few months, we used stand-alone PCs with removable hard drives to get the production started. Working with removable hard drives becomes quite a hassle if you have to manage a production of a little less than 400 books at the same time at one production site with seven recording booths.
After a few months we installed a 1 Gb network connected to a 1 Tb fileserver. All books are stored on this server during the production phase. We developed a web based scheduler to distribute all necessary DAISY projects to the different recording booths and back to the server in overnight batches. Now every morning all projects that are planned for that day are available in a specific booth to continue the recording of that book. At the end of the day all books are retrieved back to the server, without any human interference. All projects on the server are backed upp automatically using a LTO tape library. This saves us a lot of time.
As said, the Production Scheduler is a Web-based application using the platform independent script language PHP and a MySQL database -- all freeware products. Although at FNB we run a Windows 2000 server, this system could be used to run on a low cost Linux solution without changing the scripts.
The system is very flexible and supports an unlimited number of recording booths in the same network, with unlimited number of recording sessions which even could be different per studio per day of the week. At FNB, we have currently seven recording booths with different recording sessions on different days of the week.
It is possible to make ad hoc changes in the planning if a narrator cancels his or her recordingsession for that day, and you want to fill in the gap with another recording. It is even possible to plan multiple recording sessions for one book over different recording booths during the day. The system automatically moves the project from one studio to another when the previous session has ended. A locking mechanism makes sure the projects are not moved over the network while an other recording session is taking place.
If a PC is turned off at night a Wake-on-Lan signal is used to switch it on. We are now using this system since November 2002.
The Production Scheduler is freely available for Consortium members. For more information please contact Edmar Schut at FNB, the Netherlands.
In one of the regular meetings between representatives of the European Blind Union, Libraries for the print impaired, and the Federation of European Publishers (FEP) a short introduction about DAISY was given by our Secretary General, Peter Osbourne. This introduction triggered a lot of questions and interest, and as a result, the FEP asked for a presentation in their copyright commission during FEP's General Meeting, november 2002.
Because this meeting was held in Brugge (Belgium), PHK (Progrebraille Helen Keller) and FNB joined forces and gave a one hour presentation about DAISY. About 15 representatives from publishing houses from different European countries and the professional staff of FEP attended the presentation. Ingrid Hugelier (DAISY end-user), Maarten Ooms (PHK), and Maarten Verboom (FNB) stressed the need for accessible information and showed how DAISY can create the solution.
An important aspect of the presentation was how publishers and producers of alternative formats could cooperate in making publishers content accessible for people with a print impairment. Some of the publishers were concerned about the delivery of "full text" DAISY books. Guarantees about controlled distribution and protection mechanisms can eliminate those concerns.
Of course the publishers were most impressed by Ingrid who showed how she was able to read her DAISY books.
In January, there was a significant DAISY presence at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES). It is now the largest conference/show in the USA. More than 150,000 people have been reported attending in 2003.
The DAISY booth was in the Audio Book pavilion, which was a new feature at CES this year. There were six booths, and many of them were shared by more than one organization. Telex, VisuAide, and Plextor paid for the booth and displayed the DAISY banner. Representatives from these companies and the DAISY Consortium staffed the booth throughout the show. The Consortium extends its appreciation to Telex, VisuAide, and Plextor for their promotion of the DAISY standard.
The booth displayed the hardware players, but promoting the DAISY standard was the primary focus. Those who were manning the booth distributed about 75 flyers and CDs to targeted groups. Publishers, audio publishers, hardware MP3 manufacturers, educators, the press, and other standards organizations were the primary target for our booth. The DAISY Consortium thanks CNIB for its support with duplicating the CDs and the flyers and shipping them.
AOL - Time Warner AudioBooks, American Foundation for the Blind (AFB), and Dolphin were in one booth. They were demonstrating a book that AOL - Time Warner is planning to release. It is a full text and full audio book that complies with the DAISY specification. More details can be found in the press release reprinted in this issue of DAISY News.
Soulmate Audiobooks was also one of the interesting companies in attendance. They have licensed all the titles from Brilliance Audio and will be selling these using both the DAISY standard and the new Consumer Electronics Association/Audio Publishers Association (CEA/APA)MultiAudio format. For more information, read the excerpt from the Soulmate Audiobooks Web site.
The Consortium's participation in the Consumer Electronics Show was a valuable experience and furthers our ability to work collaboratively with mainstream audio publishers to promote the DAISY standard. We would like to commend Time Warner AudioBooks and Soulmate Audiobooks for their commitment to accessible and navigable multimedia information.
The following piece was released at the Consumer Electronics Show in January 2003 and is reprinted here, with deletions of dated information related to the show. Congratulations to Time Warner AudioBooks (a division of AOL Time Warner Book Group), AFB Talking Books (a department of the American Foundation for the Blind) and Dolphin Computer Access for this victory. Collaborations like this one will continue to go far in our efforts to have the DAISY standard adopted in the mainstream as the ideal method for providing access to information..
In addition, the availability of this commercial DAISY book was mentioned in a February 3, 2003 article in Publishers Weekly.
Here is the press release.
New York, January 8, 2003
Time Warner AudioBooks (a division of AOL Time Warner Book Group), AFB Talking Books (a department of the American Foundation for the Blind) and Dolphin Computer Access partner to produce the first commercially available audio e-book.
Best selling author James Patterson will release his new novel, The Jester, as an audio e-book in conjunction with its standard print, audio and e-book releases.
This new technology offers many features that allow people to enjoy books in a unique and exciting way. Readers can display the text of the book on the computer screen, fully synchronized with the audio of a professional narrator, or they can switch back and forth between the text and the audio. The ability to "toggle" between print and audio versions of the same work increases the functionality and accessibility to consumers. There is particular broad appeal for travelers and commuters who may wish to read the text and listen to the audio independently or simultaneously depending on their environment. Those who are blind, visually impaired, or dyslexic may access the text via audio or on screen in large print or in braille. Additionally, the user's experience is enhanced with features such as the search function, in which the entire text and audio may be searched for keywords and phrases.
This audio e-book will be available on an additional CD included in the unabridged CD audiobook version of The Jester, available from Time Warner AudioBooks in March of 2003. Dolphin's EaseReader software uses the synchronization technology to play and display the audio e-book through a player with an expanded screen, accessible on desktop and laptop PCs.
"I am pleased to release The Jester as an audio e-book," said James Patterson. "'On-the-go' consumers will welcome the chance to read or listen to the book on their laptops. I'm especially excited to know that people who are blind and visually impaired will benefit from this new technology."
Patterson is the phenomenal author of 20 best selling books and has over 1,000,000 audiobooks in print as well. He is the creator of the renowned Alex Cross Series and the Women's Murder Club Series, and his books have been adapted for the television and movie industries. The thrillers Kiss the Girls and Along Came a Spider became major motion pictures starring three-time Academy Award nominee Morgan Freeman.
Maja Thomas, VP Time Warner AudioBooks commented, "Innovative and efficient, the audio e-book is a perfect example of how universally designed technologies can benefit both companies and consumers. This format will be a unique resource for the publishing community and the reading public."
"We are proud to have produced the first commercial release of an accessible audio e-book for Time Warner AudioBooks," said American Foundation for the Blind President and CEO Carl R. Augusto. "This new technology opens up a world of possibilities for people who are blind or visually impaired, while simultaneously offering new options to sighted readers."
The prototype for this audio e-book, also produced and released by Time Warner AudioBooks in association with Intellectual Properties Management, Inc. (IPM) and AFB Talking Books, was "I Have a Dream" from A Call to Conscience: The Landmark Speeches of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. This audio e-book was demonstrated to former President Bill Clinton on September 21, 2000.
Time Warner AudioBooks, Dolphin Computer Access and AFB Talking Books produced The Jester in this new format, developed through the research of the DAISY Consortium. The DAISY Consortium's mission is to develop the International Standard and implementation strategies for the production, exchange, and use of Digital Talking Books, with special attention to integration with mainstream technology, to ensure access to information for people with print disabilities. Time Warner AudioBooks has partnered with Dolphin Computer Access and AFB Talking Books to develop unique multimedia solutions for audio, publishing, and accessible technology industries.
CONTACT:
Jessica Cardillo
Time Warner AudioBooks
212.522.7334
Jessica.Cardillo@aoltwbg.com
Jim Veltman
AFB Talking Books
212.502.7648
Jveltman@afb.net
John Worsfold / Stuart Barker
Dolphin Computer Access
+44 (0) 1905 754577
info@dolphinse.com
Here is an excerpt from a press release distributed by Soulmate Audiobooks, Inc. This small company is demonstrating its commitment to an excellent user experience for everyone which, with the support of the DAISY standard, can now include navigation and structure.
Soulmate Audiobooks, Inc., debuted with its new Audiobook MP3-CD line at the recent Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, NV. "We were thrilled with the response at CES," said Managing Director Kelly Gosh. "Our goal is to develop and consistently offer the best Audiobook MP3-CD listening experience available. With the new specifications for table of contents from the Consumer Electronic Association (CEA) and DAISY (Digital Accessible Information SYstem) Consortium, we finally have a way to offer a premium listening experience for everyone."
Soulmate combines CEA and DAISY specifications on one MP3-CD; Unabridged Bestsellers with Chapters and virtual Pages
The full document is located at http://www.soulmateaudio.com/news/pr1.htm.
Here is a handy list of DAISY Consortium Web site links and email addresses.
