by William Jolley
(Editor’s Note: William Jolley serves as Secretary General of the DAISY Consortium. The article below is based on a paper he prepared for presentation at the ACB national convention in Des Moines. We are honored to afford him the time and space to expand his brief convention remarks on the future of the book.)
I am delighted to have this opportunity to share information with you about the evolution of digital talking books, and in particular the DAISY standard. As Secretary General of the DAISY Consortium I am proud to be a member of the management team of the international organization in the blindness field which demonstrates so well a commitment and level of cooperation aimed toward improving the situation of blind people throughout the world. We have a big job to do, since there are many complexities and mainstream developments are occurring so rapidly; but we are tackling our tasks with teamwork and tenacity. Furthermore, we are not thinking of the digital talking book in isolation: we are looking for synergies with the production of Braille, large print and eText; we are committed to the accessibility of multimedia documents; and we want to integrate the DAISY standard with mainstream developments.
What Is the DAISY Standard: History and Background
The DAISY Consortium was formed in May 1996 as the worldwide collaboration of talking-book libraries to develop the international standards and implementation strategies for the production, exchange and use of the next generation of digital talking-books. Although our acronym, “DAISY,” still denotes the “Digital Audio-based Information System,” I predict that in a couple of years it will be taken to refer to the “Digital Accessible Information System,” because of the effects of convergence in production techniques.
There are four staff members of the DAISY Consortium. They bring an international approach and multi-disciplinary backgrounds. William Jolley is the full-time Secretary General from Australia; George Kerscher is the International Projects Manager, seconded for 50 percent of his time from Recording for the Blind & Dyslexic (RFB&D); Lynn Leith is the Training & Technical Support Coordinator, seconded for 50 percent of her time from the CNIB Library for the Blind in Canada; and Markus Gylling is Technical Developments Coordinator, seconded for 50 percent of his time from the Swedish Library of Talking Books and Braille. There are 12 full members of the DAISY Consortium, and more than 30 associate members and 10 friends. Full and associate members are non-profit organizations, typically national talking-book libraries or national consortia of such libraries. Friends are for-profit organizations including software developers and production or playback product manufacturers.
Full members pay a joining fee of $35,000 and an annual fee of $25,000. The full member from the United States is RFB&D. Associate members pay an annual fee of $2,500. The eight associate members from the United States are: American Foundation for the Blind (AFB), American Printing House for the Blind (APH), Benetech, Communication Center of Minnesota State Services for the Blind, Hadley School for the Blind, Talking Tapes/Textbooks on Tape, Clearinghouse for Specialized Media & Technology (California branch) and the Center for Applied Special Technology (CAST). Friends pay an annual fee of $2,500 as a minimum. Some donate a higher amount. The five friends from the United States are: Brilliance Audio, isSound Corporation, Microboards Technology, Microsoft Corporation and Telex Communications.
The first DAISY standard was proprietary, originating in Sweden. The idea was to use digital recording and introduce some document structuring that would allow easy navigation by the user. The concept was unveiled in 1994 and its adoption steadily gathered momentum. In 1997 the DAISY Consortium decided to adopt open standards based on file formats then being developed for the Internet. The DAISY 2.0 standard was released in 1998, and the 2.02 recommendation was approved in February 2001. We hope that DAISY 3.0 will be released early in 2002. The DAISY standards are based on XML which denotes Extensible Markup Language and SMIL which denotes Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language. XML is used for text markup, and SMIL is used for text and audio synchronization.
In essence a DAISY book is a set of digital files that includes: one or more digital audio files containing a human narration of part or all of the source text; a marked-up file containing some or all of the text (strictly speaking, this marked-up text file is optional); a synchronization file to relate markings in the text file with time points in the audio file; and a navigation control file which enables the user to move smoothly within and between files while synchronization between text and audio is maintained.
For a library book the text file might only contain the table of contents, whereas for a student’s textbook or a reference book the full text might be included.
Several approaches to playback have been developed. Software is becoming available which will play a DAISY book on a PC, where the files may be stored on the hard disk or on a CD. We anticipate that free or inexpensive playback software will be available by the fourth quarter of 2001. Two companies, Plextor from Japan and VisuAide from Canada, have developed CD players that will play both standard music CDs and DAISY-compliant CDs. Whereas a standard music CD has a maximum playing time of 74 minutes, a DAISY CD might play for more than 25 hours depending on how the digital audio files are encoded — MP3 compression, etc.
A Shared Vision of Information Access for All
Our vision is that all published information will be available to people with print disabilities, at the same time and at no greater cost, in an accessible, feature-rich, navigable format. An important element of our vision is that the utility of documents will be maximized. It is not good enough to receive an unstructured eText document or poorly formatted Braille document; we envisage a world in which the documents we read as blind people are clearly presented and convenient to use. It is the power and flexibility of the digital environment that can give us a choice among accessible formats and easy navigation around complex documents.
Accordingly, the DAISY Consortium is developing the international standard and implementation strategies for the production, exchange and use of the next generation of Digital Talking Books in both developed and developing countries, with special attention to integration with mainstream technology to ensure access to information for people with print disabilities.
Five Goals
Broadly speaking, we have defined five major goals which will guide the work of the DAISY Consortium over the next few years. These are:
1) To create and promote the worldwide standard for navigation and structuring of digital talking books;
2) To foster the establishment and development of digital talking-book library services in both developed and developing countries;
3) To maximize the accessibility and utility of electronic books and multimedia documents for people with print disabilities;
4) To secure the recognition and adoption of the DAISY standard for navigable multimedia documents among mainstream product developers and book publishers; and
5) To foster the establishment and development of a global talking-book library, which transcends geographic boundaries and linguistic differences, and which embraces cultural diversity.
What the DAISY Standard Means
The first goal is the creation and promotion of the DAISY standard. Currently there is no other standard for digital talking books, and the standard which allows a blind person to navigate through an audio document, like a sighted person navigates through a printed book, is the DAISY standard. It allows the user to move quickly between sections and subsections, to go to specific pages and index references, and may even allow text searches in full text and audio books. We highly commend the work led by Michael Moodie from NLS under the auspices of NISO to extend the DAISY standard in developing a North American digital talking book standard. We are pleased that the NISO Committee has included representatives of the DAISY Consortium, paving the way for a single worldwide digital talking book standard by early 2002.
Converting from Analog to Digital Formats Is Complex
We are fully aware that the transition for library services, both for adults and for students, from the analog to the digital environment is complex. Organizations have significant investments in human resources, book stock and playback equipment in the analog environment, and these need to be transferred to the digital environment. This is much easier and less expensive for some organizations than for others. Our concern is not just organizations in the industrialized world, but also for the creation or development of digital library services in developing countries.
A Standard for Digital Formats Makes Even Mainstream Books and Materials Accessible
Clearly, if mainstream electronic books and multi-media documents are accessible and readily usable by people with print disabilities, then the onus on service agencies to produce accessible documents is reduced. The work of both the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) within the World Wide Web Consortium and of the Open eBook Forum is critically important in this context.
Integrating the DAISY Standard with Mainstream Products
We fully expect that mainstream devices such as MP3 players will be able to play DAISY books; and that commercial audio book publishers will adopt the DAISY standard to make their products conveniently navigable for their readers.
A Global Digital Talking Book Library Is an Important Goal
This goal may be deemed to be relatively unimportant in the United States, because you have such a rich source of talking books through organizations led by the National Library Service for leisure reading and Recording for the Blind & Dyslexic for textbooks. However, the ideal of being able to access a talking book recorded in another country, without delay and with a minimum of red tape, is cherished by many blind people and their talking book libraries throughout the world. In my country of Australia, for example, English speakers want to read more books recorded in North America and the United Kingdom. Many of our immigrants, who revert to their native language for talking books as they grow older, want to read books in languages such as Italian, Greek, Russian, Polish, Hungarian, Spanish, Arabic or Chinese. Needless to say, the main barrier faced by proponents of a global library is not technical; it is the plethora of uncoordinated national copyright laws and the absence of a sensible and workable international framework for the free exchange of braille and talking books.
DAISY Implementation Today
Implementation of digital talking books is most advanced in Japan. 10,000 talking-books have been converted from analog to digital and 100 copies of 3,000 of these have been distributed to talking-book libraries. Sweden has switched to the DAISY standard for talking-book production and national distribution has commenced. Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic has commenced the rollout of DAISY books for its 90,000 student users, which should be complete by the middle of 2002. The RNIB in London plans to launch its digital talking book service in the second quarter of 2002. CNIB in Canada has started the production of DAISY books and is gearing up for conversion of its talking book library service from analog to digital over the next few years.
NLS Plans to Begin Conversion to Digital Talking Books in Five Years
The National Library Service is planning for a change-over from analog to digital in the next five years. Its contracted talking-book producers have commenced digital production, and NLS has led the work under the auspices of NISO to develop a North American digital talking book standard. It is this standard which we hope will become the DAISY 3.0 Standard. NLS is hoping to bypass CD as the distribution media, moving to a purpose-built player using flash memory cards with a capacity of 250 megabytes. These are commonly used in digital cameras, and although they still require a 50-fold decrease in price to become economically viable, their price has already reduced by a factor of 100 since 1992.
The Draft DAISY/NISO Standard provides for seven document classes on the basis of their relative audio and text content. The producer would select the class for a particular document based on factors including: production cost; the document’s topic and structure, for example, whether it is a novel or a cookbook; and user needs, which might vary according to, for example, whether a book were a textbook or a library selection. The most feature-rich document class is full text with markup, full audio narration and synchronization between audio and text.
Mainstream Developments in the Publishing Arena
The fundamental mainstream development concerns electronic books and the creation of Open eBook Specifications. The Open eBook Forum (OeBF) was formed in January 2000 out of the Open eBook Initiative which had started at the first World eBook Conference in October 1998. The Open eBook Initiative brought together a number of large software and hardware companies to consider the development of standards for electronic books, including Microsoft, Adobe and IBM. The early eBook Readers were developed by several companies working independently, and there were no common standards to facilitate interoperability or access. Fortunately the Open eBook Initiative quickly settled on the open file formats of the Internet and was also willing to take accessibility issues fully into account.
The purpose of the Open eBook Forum is to create and maintain standards and promote the successful adoption of electronic books. It is an association of hardware and software companies, publishers and users of electronic books and related organizations whose goals are to establish common specifications for electronic book systems, applications and products. These various interests have come together with the common aim of benefitting creators of content, makers of reading systems and consumers.
Harmonizing the Work of Both Groups
Last year, there were a number of developments which are expected to harmonize the work of the Open eBook Forum and the DAISY Consortium. As a result, structured electronic documents are likely to receive widespread acceptance in the mainstream and to underpin a high level of accessibility for people with print disabilities.
In May George Kerscher, then the Project Manager of the DAISY Consortium, was elected as the inaugural Chair of the Open eBook Forum. This demonstrated the extent to which accessibility is being taken seriously in the development of eBook standards. In July Microsoft joined the DAISY Consortium as a friend, providing expertise in support of the consortium’s ongoing work. In November Pulse Data International announced that it has established a relationship with Microsoft to provide access to eBooks through the Microsoft eBook Reader for blind people using the BrailleNote. This is another very important development which promises to greatly increase information access for people who are blind.
DRM Wrappers Still Prevent Access to Many E-Books
Regrettably, eBook-reader software and the eBooks themselves remain inaccessible to people using synthetic speech or Braille. This is despite the fact that XML is the markup language for Open eBooks. How can this be so? Simply it is the Digital Rights Management (DRM) regimes that are currently used. A screen reader or braille display needs to have direct access to the text, to say it or display it for the blind user, but extracting the document text from its DRM wrapper makes the text vulnerable to piracy and unlawful distribution. The Open eBook Forum is well aware of the importance of access and of the existence of access barriers, and intensive work is taking place to solve this problem.
DAISY/Open-E-Book Conversions on the Horizon
Work has commenced to achieve DAISY/OeB convergence. In particular: accessibility goals within the Open eBook Forum have been agreed upon; and an accessibility special interest group has been established within the OeBF under the leadership of Janina Sajka from the AFB.
The information access revolution for people who are blind or print disabled is well under way. We have access to a wealth of reading materials, as never before; and we have access in a range of formats and styles, as never before. But still, less than five percent of the books printed in English are accessible. The information access victory will be won, following sustained effort and cross-sectoral collaboration on multiple fronts. Convergence of trends and coordinated efforts, including the relative decline of printed matter; strong, yet practical, laws; Benetech’s BookShare project; braille production from XML files; accessible Open eBooks; and feature-rich, navigable, digital talking books based on the worldwide DAISY standard, herald a future where we who are blind can read all the books our friends and colleagues are enjoying at the same time and with the same degree of navigability and access as everyone else. I’m getting ready for what’s coming, and I hope that you are too.