GM 0304 item 6
2002 has been a year in which the DAISY Consortium has supported its membership as new digital talking book services have been launched throughout the world, benefiting many thousands of visually impaired people. Thanks to the collaborative effort that is the major strength of the Consortium, many people are now experiencing a better way to read.
The new DAISY Specifications were approved and a maintenance committee was established, jointly sponsored by the DAISY Consortium and the National Library Service, for the Blind and Physically Handicapped (NLS), under the auspices of the National Information Standards Organisation, NISO (USA).
The DAISY Consortium has consolidated its management structure, and five Board committees are beginning to outline the strategic direction of the Consortium. This report has been structured according to the structure now adopted by the Board.
As demonstrated by the audited statement of accounts, the Consortium continues to be managed well within forecasted budget, delivering outstanding progress on behalf of its Members and Friends. Much of what has been achieved would not be possible without the dedication of the staff of the Consortium, and I would like to take this opportunity to thank them for their commitment.
The Royal National Institute of the Blind (RNIB) continued to provide the Consortium with the services of a Secretary-General. William Jolley left this position early in the year, and I would like to thank him for his efforts on our behalf. It was agreed that the role of Secretary-General would be carried out by Peter Osborne, previously a member of the Board, and that RNIB would recruit a full-time Administrator and Web site Editor. I am delighted that Peter Osborne, Louise Hallsworth and Jennifer Sutton have been able to support the Consortium in these respective roles, and would like to thank RNIB for supporting the Consortium in such a loyal manner.
I wish also to thank Recording for the Blind & Dyslexic (RFB&D) for letting the Consortium continue to have George Kerscher as our International Project Manager. George Kerscher gives an enormous contribution to the DAISY Consortium. I am happy to recognise all of our staff members as hardworking, dedicated and talented and we thank TPB contributing with Markus Gylling, CNIB with Lynn Leith and JSRPD with Miki Azuma.
The board met four times during 2002, in Hamburg, Toronto, Glasgow and Seoul. The General Meeting was in Toronto, and I want to take the opportunity to thank the respective Member organisations for arranging these meetings generously and welcoming the Consortium.
The year has seen a steady growth in Members and Friends of the DAISY Consortium. One change among Full Members: Korean DAISY Consortium dissolved and changed to Korea Braille Library as Full Member and Korea Blind Union to Associate Member. Other New Associate Members in 2002 were:
New Friends in 2002 were:
The cornerstone of the work of the DAISY consortium, since its foundation in 1996, has been the creation and evolution of the DAISY Specification for digital talking books. As the year 2002 comes to its end, we are proud to announce that the third generation DAISY Standard, the ANSI/NISO Z39.86 standard has been adopted, and that a maintenance committee has been established under the auspices of NISO. This iteration of the standard builds on the DAISY 2.02 specification, and the Consortium is already beginning to address forward migration so that Members can more easily implement the standard once tools become available. This achievement has been possible thanks to the collaborative effort between The DAISY Consortium and NLS, bringing together world-class expertise in pursuit of common goals. We are now on the brink of establishing the standard as the national file format for educational materials in the USA. This will be an important example of bringing the DAISY standard in to the publishing mainstream, and it will provide a beacon for development throughout the rest of the world.
The DAISY 2.02 Specification is stable, and may be applied to books which are audio-only, text-audio or text-only. It is the DAISY 2.02 Specification which we recommend for conformance by DAISY book producers, production software developers and playback product manufacturers.
Collaboration between DAISY staff and Friends, and the Consumer Electronics Association in the USA has resulted in the development of a standard for audio materials to be played by standard consumer electronics which also has the support of the Audio Publishers Association in the USA. We look forward to attending a major consumer electronics show in 2003, where we hope to increase awareness of the work of the Consortium and relevance of the standard to mainstream audio publishing.
George Kerscher continues to represent the Consortium on the Open eBook Forum. As Chairman of the Board, George has been able to continually provide input regarding the development of the work of the Forum, attempting to establish greater understanding of, and commitment to the provision of accessible information and the development of appropriate standards.
On November 28, 2002, the working group for the implementation of Skippable Structures distributed a draft recommendation for Consortium-wide review. This describes an implementation plan for these features in books being produced to the DAISY 2.02 specification. It is intended that tools will be developed to enable the production of materials where footnotes or references, for example, may be optionally skipped. 2003 will see the development of DAISY readers so that they can take advantage of skippable structures, and it is anticipated that Members will begin to produce materials containing such structures.
The first meeting on the research project, "Towards an International Navigation Model for the Use of Streaming Multimedia By Persons with Disabilities" was held in Bangkok in June. In addition, a three-day working group meeting on JFW scripting for LpStudio/Pro and Sigtuna DAR 3 was conducted, and there was a two-day workshop on XML and the use of Markup Definition Files (MDF).
2002 has seen the promise of a better way to read turn in to reality in many countries. At a presentation given at the California State University conference, CSUN, in March, Peter Osborne described planned implementations, focusing in detail on the launch of a leisure reading service in the UK. As we reach the end of the year, RNIB reports that 8000 people, many of whom are elderly, now enjoy reading digital talking books. With significant national services launched in Canada and the USA, 2002 has seen a leap forward in the delivery of services based on the DAISY concept.
Already established tools such as LpStudio/Pro have been further refined, with Members developing further installations so as to increase the production of information in the DAISY format. The core group of trainers and beta testers have worked tirelessly to achieve even better stability for DAISY production tools, and I would like to thank them for their persistence and dedication.
The Consortium continues to benefit from a range of tools developed by its Members and Friends, and 2002 brings many welcome new developments: LpStudio/Pro enhancements; Sigtuna DAR 3; MyStudio PC; DAISY Spy; Regenerator; DAISY 2.02 Validator beta release; Plextalk PTR1 hardware player/recorder; OTARI DX-5, A DAISY-2 Compatible MO-Recorder For Talking-Book Production; AMIS, Adaptive Multimedia Information System; EaseReader; The INCI Reader; eClipseReader from IRTI; KBLL Reader 1.0; and TPB Reader. It is the thriving world-wide implementation of the DAISY concept that makes so many developments viable, and I would like to thank all Members and Friends for their continued innovation and support.
One of the key benefits of membership is access to the expertise of the core trainers lead by Lynn Leith. We have successfully delivered training courses throughout the world, including in Latin America, Malaysia, India, and Korea, providing a springboard for organisations as they begin implementation.
Member organisations may request a training course to be held at their premises, mainly for the purpose of training experts who can deliver training to other operatives in the organisation. goals of training and technical support are to develop resources and carry out training; to co-ordinate and expand the consortium's pool of expert trainers; and to ensure that every ember has an opportunity to gain access to training and support.
A prerequisite for training is a good training manual. The DAISY Training Manual was reviewed and revised during the year, and provides an excellent reference for use of LpStudio/PRO as the DAISY Consortium's primary production tool, and training materials now provide information on Sigtuna DAR 3 and My Studio PC; production tools generously developed by JSRPD.
The DAISY Consortium is keen to promote DAISY in developing countries, engaging them to become Associate Members, and the DAISY Board has approved a Small Grants Scheme to help Associate Members in developing countries to carry out DAISY related projects.
Hiroshi Kawamura is the chair of the Board Committee for Developing Countries, and he has been very active taking part and arranging DAISY conferences in several Asian countries. Especially successful was the collaboration with UN ESCAP. With a grant from the Japanese Government arranged by Hiroshi Kawamura, the DAISY Consortium funded the travel of several experts to a meeting held in Bangkok from June 20-22. The experts developed a set of recommendations that were presented to the United Nations. In addition, DAISY technology was on display for the three day conference.
The DAISY Consortium sent Ingar, George, Markus, and Miki to the conference. Hiroshi and other JSRPD staff attended as well. Judy Brewer attended representing the W3C. The Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Seminar was conducted for persons with Disabilities in the Asia Pacific Region. Approximately 20 expert resource persons were invited to the first day round table discussion. On this first day the experts created a list of recommendations intended for submission to the United Nations targeting the Asia Pacific region. DAISY and WAI technologies were prominent in these recommendations.
The second day was at the United Nations conference room. It was a very impressive venue. Hiroshi Kawamura chaired a panel presentation with Ingar, George, Judy Brewer, and Ms. King from the ITU(International Telecom). In the afternoon the recommendations were presented, and comments from the participants were collected. In meetings in the evening and the next day, the comments were included in the recommendations, and the final draft was submitted. The most significant statement was that in the Information Age, access to information is a basic human right and ICT should be universal, open, non-proprietary and have a proven record of accessibility.
On the third day, several workshops were conducted. A full day DAISY training session and a full day Web Accessibility workshop were two of the most heavily attended sessions.
The DAISY Consortium has become a member of ITU to find a platform to participate actively in the preparations of the agenda for the World Summit on Information Society, WSIS in Geneva 2003. Both Hiroshi and Peter Osborne have participated in preconferences in Asia and Europe. A close collaboration with the World Blind Union (WBU) is important, and the DAISY Consortium became an international member of the WBU this year.
A five-year project "DAISY for all" including 36 developing countries has been submitted for funding to the Nippon Foundation.
The DAISY Consortium took a more decisive step towards an active marketing strategy during 2002 and invited the Members and Friends to take part in a preconference before the General meeting in Toronto to discuss and define the Marketing goals for the DAISY Consortium and to form a plan. The Marketing plan was then presented by the Committee chair, Maarten Verboom, at the General Meeting and the goals have been followed up. The main marketing objectives were:
Short term goals and action plan were set to:
Many of the short term goals have been obtained. One of the most important tools for communication is the Web site, and the new www.daisy.org was launched thanks to the hard and inspired work of Jennifer Sutton and Markus Gylling.
Jennifer has also been responsible for 3 successful productions of Daisy News. Papers with core messages and with assets of membership have also been processed and a lot of ad hoc produced promotion cds. A survey has been distributed to the Full Members.
We come to the end of another year. The DAISY standard is further advanced, and its worldwide adoption is assured. Our membership has increased steadily both in developed and developing countries. It has been a year of successful implementing around the world. Most importantly, it has been another year of peer support and strong networking for Members and Friends of the DAISY Consortium, organisations helping each other to move forward in our common cause. It has been a year of hard work for many people. We look forward to another year of hard work, but one which promises to bring further advances in recognition and implementation of the DAISY system.
I thank those Members and Friends of the DAISY Consortium which have so generously made their staff available to work on DAISY projects, and I thank Members and Friends for their ongoing loyalty and commitment to both the DAISY Consortium and the DAISY system. Finally I repeat my thanks to the DAISY staff and members of the DAISY Board for their hard work and dedication throughout the year.
Ingar Beckman Hirschfeldt
President