15.9 Chapter Summary and Conclusion

are useful to people without disabilities, and so the cost for these capabilities will be within reach of even the poor.

The ultimate DAISY book will become more practical and cost-effective as it contains all sorts of exciting content. Imagine a textbook that is fully accessible to all people. All of the text in the book could be provided in audio form narrated by a human (or equally, a human sounding TTS) and in digital text form, which can be accessed using a visual or Braille display or voice synthesizer. The illustrations and graphics could have both the colour images and a detailed description of the illustration in text and/or audio. Every table of contents entry and index entry could be hyperlinked so that a reader could jump to that item or hear a dictionary definition of a given word. DAISY is powerful enough to have all of these different kinds of content in a single book, and to link them all together seamlessly.

Today, this kind of book would be very expensive to create. As time goes on, many of the costs of producing this ultimate book will decrease. Furthermore, it will appeal to the mass market. Recognition of this has led the DAISY Consortium to start positioning the DAISY format as being the ideal electronic book format for everybody, not just people with print disabilities that interfere with the reading of printed books. As electronic books become a commonplace alternative to print books, people with disabilities will benefit, as long as they are not locked out by poor design decisions.

The pace of each of these technical innovations is hard to predict precisely, and not all of them may come to pass in the next decade. However, the likelihood that they all will happen is high. The outcome of the confluence of interest between the general consumer market and people with visual disabilities, especially in the form of the cell phone of the future, will lead to expanded independent access to the tools of literacy and content.

15.9 Chapter Summary and Conclusion

15.9.1 Chapter Summary

Most computer-based access technologies use a digital text file as a key element in the system. The best way to get this digital text is directly from the publisher, but this is logistically difficult in many cases. Since much information still resides as print as in books, letters, bills, bank statements, newspapers and magazines, how is this information to be made accessible to the visually impaired? The answer is to use optical character recognition (OCR) technology to create an electronic file that can then be turned into accessible Braille, large print or audio.

In this chapter, the fundamentals of OCR technology were first described. Different reading systems built with OCR were presented. Explored next was the new international standard for digital talking books, the DAISY standard, and its associated players. Methods of accessing textbooks and newspapers were discussed next, highlighting new efforts to obtain these directly from publishers and avoiding the need to OCR these challenging documents. A discussion of future technological development closed the chapter.

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15.9.2 Conclusion

The goal of parity in access to print for people with visual impairments is coming within reach. The power to choose any book or document, and the decisions of how and where to read it, will continue to shift into the hands of individual readers, without the need for human intermediaries. The DAISY Consortium’s vision will shift from a Utopian concept to a practical expectation: “that all published information is available to people with print disabilities, at the same time and at no greater cost, in an accessible, feature-rich, navigable format”. Independent access to literacy will lead to greater educational, employment and personal opportunities for all people with vision impairments around the globe.

Questions

Q.1 Examine the economics of accessible book production. Consider factors such as book acquisition, converting the book into accessible formats such as audio, Braille and digital text and quality control. Can you determine ways to make access more cost-effective?

Q.2 Examine the methods and economics of accessible book distribution. What will replace the traditional approach of providing audio tapes and Braille hardcopy books through a free postal system? Will different media continue to be shipped, or will an electronic distribution system become the dominant mode? What are the advantages of different possible methods?

Q.3 How well do you think automated translation of electronic texts works to and from languages (i.e., English to Spanish and vice versa) you understand well? Try out some services that are available for free on the Web. Is this appropriate for solving the access problem, say for non-English speakers?

Q.4 Developing countries generally cannot afford extensive investment in accessible book programs at present. Choose a country of interest and find out what that country is doing today for accessible books. Learn about the books and materials they are focusing on. For example, many choose to concentrate on the national curriculum and examinations, since these have a significant impact on economic opportunity. Does your country have local languages where there is demand for accessible content? For your chosen country, try to learn or project what the next five or ten years will hold.

Q.5 Investigate how copyright laws make it easier or harder to share accessible books across borders. What are two or three changes you would recommend to improve this situation?

Projects

The following projects are intended to provide direct insight into the accessibility process.

P.1 Download a DAISY text ebook and look at the XML text file in a simple text editor. You will be surprised at how simple the tags are that make DAISY files more accessible.