[senit] Switch accessible electronic books

I'd like to start a debate about how switch users, and other users of

The daisy format maybe? www.daisy.org - primarily designed with visual impairment in mind but with the intent initially that it have universal appeal.  It's not actually a format but rather an open standard for delivering and synchronising mixed media in order to make the content accessible.  Publishers don't mind it because it can only play on a proprietory (daisy compatible) player - software or hardware.  Supported formats include xhtml (for text), mp3 (audio), images, and one or two others.  When used on a software player text to speech is possible so you can have books read aloud even where source material is in text format.

Has advantages over pdf that players work more like media playters, it's easy to skp between pages - or other navigation elements, word, sentence, paragraph, chapter etc.  shouldn't be very difficult to adapt software or hardware players for alternate modes of input.

Limitation is probably availability of reading material in UK at current time.

Adrian Higginbotham
Project manager: Learning services
Becta
Tel: Direct dial 024 7679 7333 - Becta switchboard 02476-416994.
Email: Adrian.Higginbotham at becta.org.uk
Web: http://www.becta.org.uk/
BECTA, Millburn Hill Road, Science Park, Coventry, CV4 7JJ 

-----Original Message-----
From: senit-bounces at lists.becta.org.uk [mailto:senit-bounces at lists.becta.org.uk] On Behalf Of Richard Walter
Sent: 17 January 2008 20:38
To: senit at lists.becta.org.uk
Subject: Re: [senit] Switch accessible electronic books

Paul Nisbet wrote:
> I'd like to start a debate about how switch users, and other users of 
> assistive technologies (e.g. communication aids, IntelliKeys, eye-gaze 
> systems, speech recognition, head-operated mice) can access electronic 
> books.
>
>  
Yes an interesting one.
I think we could do with a general reader that was easy to use and alter -so I would have thought that an open format would be better than one that is owned commercially and thus liable to change every few years and could possibly have restrictions on the distribution.
PDF is more or less an open format but it is not switch accessible.
You could cobble together text reader with a pdf- I don't know if you could make it all switch accessible using a switch interface, certainly I think you could do page turning.

You can obviously make accessible books in Powerpoint, Clicker 5, Hyperstudio, SwitchItmaker, Opus etc etc Powerpoint limited to a single access point if using switches, and all of them need quite alot of work to create a complete book.

Perhaps we should start from the other end and say what it is we need in a generic talking book reader.

Richard Walter