ANSI/NISO Z39.86 Call for Revision Consideration
The
ANSI/NISO Z39.86-2005, Specifications for the Digital Talking
Book is requested to be opened for consideration of revision. This
request is submitted by the DAISY Consortium and the Advisory Committee which
serves as the maintenance agency.
About the DAISY Consortium
The DAISY Consortium is a standards and implementation organization that
is made up of non-profit organizations throughout the world. The Consortium
consists primarily of libraries serving persons who are blind and print
disabled. In addition, for-profit companies participate as "Friends" who
provide products and services and support the mission of the DAISY
Consortium. You can learn more at the DAISY
Consortium's Web site.
NOTE: The DAISY Consortium and NISO have agreed to co brand the standard. The term DAISY/NISO Standard is being used as an informal reference to the ANSI/NISO Z39.86 Standard.
Background</h2>
<p>The DAISY Consortium first published open non-proprietary royalty-free standards surrounding digital talking books
in 1999. DAISY 2.02, the last published revision, has enjoyed huge success that
surpasses any other assistive technology used in the blindness field.
Over 200,000
DAISY-compatible hardware players have been sold to date, plus numerous
DAISY software packages. It is clear that we have a widely
adopted standard that is entrenched in the blindness community and in libraries
serving persons with disabilities. This standard has replaced the use of the analog cassette in many countries.</p>
<p>The NISO Z39.86 Standard grew from the early work of the DAISY Consortium. It
was first approved in 2002 and updated with minor revisions in 2005. From a
technical perspective, The DAISY/NISO 2005 Standard is clearly superior but
adoption has been slow. Upgrading existing DAISY 2.02 content, production work flows and tools, and playback systems will incur significant costs, and content-producing organizations do not see sufficient incremental benefits with the new standard to warrant the investment of time and resources.
</p>
<p>
Despite this, DAISY/NISO Z39.86 as been adopted by other standards groups in related domains.
The XML for the text content document is defined in a DTD called "dtbook." This XML vocabulary has been approved in the USA as the National Instructional Materials Standard (NIMAS) by
the Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP). In the reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Act (IDEA), publishers of K-12 textbooks are required to make XML files that conform to this DTD to assist in making textbooks accessible to persons with disabilities. In addition, the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF) has included this same XML vocabulary in the revision of their standard for eBooks. Also referenced by the IDPF is the navigation model defined in the DAISY/NISO Standard, which is the NCX DTD. Finally the
Association on Higher Education And Disabilities (AHEAD) is moving towards dtbook in their E-Text Solutions working group. Legislation in states for higher education are being proposed and approved, and everybody wants a common standard. Multimedia control in the current DAISY/NISO Standard is based on the W3C's SMIL 2.0 specification. The upcoming revision of SMIL has specific support for DAISY profiles that the DAISY/NISO standard could use.</p>
<h2>Purpose</h2>
<p>The purpose of this call for revision consideration is:</p>
<ul>
<li>to gather <strong>requirements from experienced users</strong> of the
DAISY/NISO Standards, based on many years of actual use. <em>To what
extent does the DAISY/NISO Standard meet the requirements of experienced
user groups? </em></li>
<li>To gather <strong>requirements from new users</strong> of the
DAISY/NISO Standards. In many countries across the globe, the target user
groups of the DAISY/NISO Standard has increased during the last decade. A
common pattern among DAISY member organisations is for example the
inclusion of users with dyslexia and cognitive disabilities. <em>To what
extent does the DAISY/NISO Standard meet the requirements of new user
groups?</em> </li>
<li>To gather requirements and advice from <strong>providers</strong>:
DAISY producers, mainstream publishers, educators, technology developers,
and other standards organizations.</li>
<li>To identify technical advancements that should be incorporated into the
DAISY/NISO Standard.</li>
<li>To consider defining multiple standard profiles with different
requirements, such as text only and audio only, to simplify and optimize
these for different uses</li>
<li>To consider breaking the standard into modules, to allow the building
of profiles and to facilitate re-use of components of the standard in
new ways</li>
</ul>
<h2>Evolving Technology and Standards</h2>
<p>A host of technological developments have arisen since NISO published the
first Z39.86 Standard in 2002. Many developments are in the circle of our
interest. Some of these are: broad acceptance of XML, eBook specifications
from the IDPF, Audio book specifications from the CEA, proliferation of
personal audio devices such as iPods, Pod Casting, advances in compression
beyond MP3 such as WB-AMR, WMA, and Ogg Vorbis, Cellular Phone developments,
increased broadband availability, internet distribution options, recognition
that multimedia (including video) is ideal to reach the broadest population
for distance learning, certain print disabilities and emergency preparedness,
DRM developments, large scale book projects such as Google Books, and the
desire to develop the global library. To name a few.</p>
<h2>A Specification that Supports Profiles and Modularization</h2>
<p>
As noted in the "Background" section above, adoption of DAISY/NISO Z39.86 has been slow in part because of the costs of converting existing content and work flows. Currently the bulk of the DAISY content that has been produced has been audio-only content (no digital text, no advanced multimedia), and for such content, the technologies of Z39.86 do not provide enough improvement over DAISY 2.02 to warrant the expense of adoption. In addition, because the specification is monolithic, any player that wishes to support the spec must support the complete feature set, even if the content available only uses a fraction of those features. Many of these pose a burden on lighter-weight hardware players that have limited computing resources available, thus shutting low-cost players out of the Z39.86 market.\
</p>
<p>
A technical direction that the Advisory Committee has identified for addressing this issue is that of modularization and profiling. This approach has been increasingly adopted by other specifications and would allow for content producers and player manufacturers to tailor their implementations to meet their specific needs without adding unnecessary overhead. The current audio-only book model, for example, could be supported by Z39.86 as a separate profile implementing only those parts of the specification (modules) that are needed to provide that basic functionality. The complete set of modules could be put together to support a more complex, multimedia publication that was more appropriate for educational or other advanced uses. Low-cost hardware devices or even mobile phones could support a profile that minimized the needs for computing power and storage. Having a range of such profiles would help to lower the barriers to adoption and provide a smooth transitional path for organizations currently producing and supporting DAISY 2.02 content.
</p>
<p>Profiling implies modularization of the specification: the division of the specification into discrete and independent parts. Beyond the creation of profiles, this modularization would help support the kind of reuse and innovation that has been taking place already with the current version of DAISY/NISO Z39.86, as noted in the "Background" section above. The direct incorporation of Z39.86 modules into other specifications would help make the technologies and approaches to accessibility developed by DAISY/NISO more universally present in a variety of contexts.
</p>
<h2>Conclusion</h2>
<p>Based upon the information provided in this document, we ask that the
<em>Content and Collections</em> Committee of NISO consider our call for
consideration of a revision to the ANSI/NISO Z39.86-2005 Standard.</p>
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Last revised: 15 August 2007
Status: Draft 4, reviewed, integrated Karen, Rob and James comments