Priorities for Moving Forward

Premise

This group, representing organizations from around the world, enthusiastically supports the DAISY standards, and we are committed to work on the implementation of the global library in order to ensure its realization.

Overarching Priorities

  1. Request that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation establish a priority for the funding of libraries for the blind and print disabled to develop and implement the global library and DAISY related projects worldwide.
  2. Request financial assistance from Microsoft, in the development of a project plan and with the project management and implementation of identified projects.

Short Term Priorities that are Specific to Long Horn

  1. A DAISY reading application integrated into the Windows Media Foundation or Microsoft Reader, as it will be incarnated in Long Horn, supporting the DAISY Standard, ANSI/NISO Z39.86, with and without DRM. This reading application must be backward compatible to the currently implemented DAISY standard to support playback of DAISY 2.02 content. The DAISY Consortium will make its technical people available for spec review and assistance.
  2. Support for "save as DAISY xml" in authoring and conversion applications with the option to generate the entire conformant file set.
  3. We will ensure that Microsoft Press and Microsoft developers understand why DAISY is a better way to read and publish, and DAISY representatives will be available for education, support and technical issues.

Non-Long Horn Specific Priorities

  1. Pixel to XML technology available as an application as quickly as possible. DAISY offers to be a worldwide beta testing group for this application.
  2. The independent publisher, Microsoft Press, should begin to publish all new content in DAISY format, simultaneously with the publication of documents
  3. In conjunction with IFLA and DAISY, support the development and implementation of a federated search of the catalogues of participating libraries for the blind. This search functionality will support the search all catalogues that may contain content of interest and that is accessible.