DAISY Digital Talking Book

DAISY Digital Talking Book

DAISY (Digital Accessible Information System) is a technical standard for digital audio books, periodicals and computerized text. DAISY is designed to be a complete audio substitute for print material and is specifically designed for use by people with "print disabilities," including blindness, impaired vision, and dyslexia. Based on MP3 and XML, the format has advanced features in addition to those of a traditional audio book. Users can search, place bookmarks, precisely navigate line by line, and regulate the speaking speed without distortion. DAISY also provides aurally accessible tables, references and additional information. As a result, DAISY allows visually impaired listeners to navigate something as complex as an encyclopedia or textbook, otherwise impossible using conventional audio recordings.

DAISY multimedia can be a book, magazine, newspaper, journal, computerized text or a synchronized presentation of text and audio. It provides up to six embedded "navigation levels" for content, including embedded objects such as images, graphics, and MathML. In the DAISY standard, navigation is enabled within a sequential and hierarchical structure consisting of (marked-up) text synchronized with audio. DAISY 2 was based on XHTML and SMIL. DAISY 3 is a newer technology, also based on XML, and is standardized as ANSI/NISO Z39.86-2005.

The DAISY Consortium was founded in 1996 and consists of international organizations committed to developing equitable access to information for people who have a print disability. The consortium was selected by the National Information Standards Organization (NISO) as the official maintenance agency for the DAISY/NISO Standard

Read more about DAISY Digital Talking Book:  Specification, Access To Materials, Playback and Production

Famous quotes containing the words daisy, talking and/or book:

    The token woman carries a bouquet of hothouse celery
    and a stenographer’s pad; she will take
    the minutes, perk the coffee, smile
    like a plastic daisy and put out
    the black cat of her sensuous anger
    to howl on the fence all night.
    Marge Piercy (b. 1936)

    There is no assurance of the great fact in question [namely, immortality]. All the arguments are mere probabilities, analogies, fancies, whims. We believe, or disbelieve, or are in doubt according to our own make-up—to accidents, to education, to environment. For myself, I do not reach either faith or belief ... that I—the conscious person talking to you—will meet you in the world beyond—you being yourself a conscious person—the same person now reading what I say.
    Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)

    Paper is cheap, and authors need not now erase one book before they write another. Instead of cultivating the earth for wheat and potatoes, they cultivate literature, and fill a place in the Republic of Letters. Or they would fain write for fame merely, as others actually raise crops of grain to be distilled into brandy.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)