[bksvol-discuss] DAISY navigation in publisher quality books
- From: "Judy s." <cherryjam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 03 Sep 2014 15:06:55 -0500
Hi all,
Just some observations on the missing or poor DAISY navigation in
publisher quality books. As a sighted, but disabled, reader, one of the
things I hate about the evolution of the ebook format for sighted
readers for platforms like the Kindle is that publishers have decided
that page numbers, page breaks and even in many cases clearly delineated
chapter headings are a thing of the past. The publisher quality books
we're getting as members here on Bookshare aren't worse in terms of
navigation than the ones sighted readers get when using a kindle or a
nook. Instead, they are equally awful.
Part of it is of course that a physical page in a printed book is itself
an artifact of the limitations and demands of the physical printing of a
book, and the shelf space it takes, the optimal size of a book for
holding and reading, the book's purpose and all sorts of other factors.
None of those translate into the needs of presenting a book on an
electronic screen. And part of it is a learning curve, as the ebook
industry feels its way into how to make ebooks work. There still isn't
any industry standard for how an ebook should look on a screen or
navigate or all kinds of other factors that affect the final product
that the consumer (or in our case the disabled reader) gets.
As a member, it's very frustrating to have books with poor or no
navigation, no page numbers and the like. However, I just don't see that
Bookshare has a whole lot of say in what comes in terms of what's in a
book for navigation from the publishers because of the above. Bookshare
certainly doesn't have the funding or the staff to turn around and put
all those things into the hundreds of thousands of books that have come in.
I'm not making excuses for the publishers or Bookshare here. I'm just
sharing my observations.
--
Judy s.
Follow me on Twitter at QuackersNCheese
<https://twitter.com/QuackersNCheese>
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