[infoshare] Fw: MicroSoft will supply free Daisy
- From: "Luis Guerra" <brl50sky@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: "InfoShare" <InfoShare@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 8 Dec 2007 21:17:50 -0500
For those of you who are avid readers and computer buffs, this should
interest you. I warn you--it is very lengthy. Hope you find it useful.
Microsoft and DAISY Help Enhance Reading Experience for People with Print
Disabilities
A tool for Microsoft Word, to be released as a downloadable plug-in at no
charge early next year, will enable the translation of millions of Open XML
documents
into DAISY XML, the lingua franca of the globally accepted standard for
digital talking books.
Most of us have probably given little thought to the mental gymnastics
involved when we read text in a book or on a computer
screen. But every time we look at text there's a whole lot more going on
than the literal meaning of the words.
In order to navigate text, parse information, speed-read, skim over sections
and locate the data that interests us, we perform a complex calculus of
considerations
for which we rely on visual cues like the table of contents, formatting,
indentations, the index and the glossary to guide us as our eyes dance
across
the pages.
Now imagine instead that you were suddenly deprived of all that rich visual
data and that the information was presented in one crude mass of
undifferentiated
text that you had to slog through sequentially in linear fashion from cover
to cover.
For the 180 million blind or visually impaired people worldwide and the
millions more who are otherwise print disabled, unable to process text
because of
cognitive, learning, developmental, perceptual or physical disabilities,
that is often what it feels like when using analog audio recordings to
access
the same information the rest of us take for granted in books or on screen.
"When you don't see print, you lose more than the ability to read words,"
explains Jim Marks, director of services for students with disabilities at
the
University of Montana, who went blind as an undergraduate in the early
1980s. "You lose the ability to see the page, jump around in the text and be
drawn
to bolded or italicized information."
"When I switched from the ability to read print to audio, it was like a
stream of consciousness. Trying to find the page number on an audio cassette
was
a miserable experience."
In an increasingly information-driven society, it's an issue of equity,
Marks says, particularly for blind or visually impaired students. "It's not
just
access to information that gives students equal footing, but the ability to
manipulate that information."
Efforts to level the playing field for print-disabled readers received a
major boost this week with news that Microsoft is developing a tool for
Microsoft
Word, to be released as a downloadable plug-in at no charge early next year,
that will enable the translation of millions of Open XML documents into
DAISY
XML, the lingua franca of the globally accepted Digital Access Information
SYstem, or DAISY, standard for digital talking books.
The DAISY Consortium, a coalition of talking-book libraries and nonprofit
organizations, was formed in 1996 to harness the rich capabilities opened up
by
the transition from analog to digital technology to ensure that all
published information is available to people with print disabilities at the
same time
and at no greater cost in accessible, feature-rich, navigable format.
DAISY-formatted files enable users to scroll through auditory content using
simple keystrokes to hone in on specific sections, and configure its
playback
to skip over items like footnotes.
DAISY material can be played on dedicated devices or on PCs by installing
special software.
"DAISY enhances the reading experience to most closely approximate how
sighted people read print," Marks says.
"It gives you the power to be a sophisticated reader," says George Kerscher,
secretary general of the DAISY Consortium. DAISY's specifications have been
shaped by feedback from talking book users and the spectrum of needs they
identified, he says.
Those with low vision lamented, for instance, that with auditory cassettes
they could hear the words but not see how they were spelled, Kerscher
recounts.
Accordingly, DAISY gives these users the option of visually following the
text in large print as it is heard. People who are blind can track auditory
output
using a refreshable Braille display composed of tiny
electronically-activated pins that pop up to denote words on screen as they
pass their fingertips
along the display.
DAISY works by creating a digital audio file narrating the document's
content that maps to a text file with the XML structure of the text marked
up.
"It transforms visual information into semantic information," explains
Kerscher. "If there's something on the screen that's very large, centered,
bold and
in a special font, when that's exported [to DAISY] it's marked semantically
as a heading based on its structure.
"There's synergy between the content and the reading system. Information
like page numbers and terms marked as footnotes allow navigation."
Myriad documents can be made more accessible with DAISY, says Rajiv Shah, a
federal government contractor who is blind and an avid DAISY user. "If you
rely
on documents for reference, you can jump to information.under different
headings - all these things are indexed. It increases users' efficiency."
DAISY has been widely hailed as a quantum leap for readers with print
disabilities, and some 300,000 DAISY reading systems have been sold,
Kerscher says.
Still, despite such demand, people who are blind or visually impaired remain
acutely underserved by the amount of material available in DAISY and other
alternative formats.
Just 5 percent of the material available to sighted readers has been
converted into accessible formats, Kerscher says.
He has high hopes that Microsoft's support will place DAISY on the radar of
mainstream publishing and be a catalyst for wider dissemination of material
in alternative formats.
"Microsoft's announcement is monumental in greatly facilitating the
availability of text in DAISY books," Kerscher says. "It provides a clear,
production
path for organizations and universities who will be able to use the
Microsoft plug-in to move into DAISY XML. Putting tools in the hands of
people who
create content is a giant step toward creating equal access to information.
"It's going to move DAISY.from the niche of the libraries for the blind
community into the mainstream," adds Kerscher, who hopes Microsoft's move
will galvanize
publishers to "repurpose material for sale to people with print
disabilities."
Meanwhile DAISY's utility extends to a wide variety of people and
situations.
The capability to synchronize auditory and visual delivery of text offers
"dual reinforcement" that helps language learners as well as dyslexic
readers,
Kerscher says. And the capacity to switch between auditory delivery of text
and reading it visually could be handy for sighted users transitioning
between
eye-busy scenarios like driving and other situations.
DAISY is also a boon for elderly people with deteriorating vision who may
not have experience utilizing computer-based solutions. "Elderly people can
use
a DAISY player without the complexity of a computer," says Kerscher. The
number of blind seniors in the United States alone is projected to increase
by
50 percent between 2015 and 2030 to 2.4 million.
Consideration of special needs is an integral part of Microsoft's product
design process. The Open XML-DAISY XML Translator builds on Microsoft's
long-standing
commitment to promoting information access for users with disabilities.
For Marks, the ability to "Save as DAISY" in Microsoft Office Word
represents an important validation of disabled users' needs and sends a
powerful message
to society at large.
"I'm incredibly impressed with Microsoft's leadership on this. I feel, as a
person with a disability who uses this technology, acknowledged and
recognized
- that's a good thing."
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