[senit] Switch accessible electronic books

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

agree with much of what you say Paul - there are plenty of limitation with daisy one merrit though is that it is just a standard for aligning existing formats so a daisy audio book is infact mp3 files which you can easily pull out and play in whatever way suits you best.  there are some free software daisy players.  daisy can play/display  written documents too but I don't know of any hardware playters with a display so it does mean sitting infront of a screen if you want to actually read text - as I said - limitations.

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 Paul Nisbet
Sent: 18 January 2008 17:34
To: senit at lists.becta.org.uk
Subject: RE: [senit] Switch accessible electronic books

Yes that's one option - a switch accessible Daisy book reader (both a software reader on PC/Mac or a hardware player). Publishers don't mind Daisy because Daisy players are very expensive compared with ordinary MP3 players and therefore it's a method of limiting availability, but I think we want low cost and good availability, which means using mainstream technologies if we can. If the rest of the world uses PDF and ordinary MP3, then what are the chances of persuading the rest of the world to convert to Daisy? Daisy is a really good format for people with visual impairment because it's designed for that population, but it may or may not suit people with a physical impairment. I suspect we need multiple formats plus converters to transform books into the required format.

Paul     

_______________________________________________
Paul D. Nisbet
Senior Research Fellow
Communication Aids for Language and Learning (CALL) Centre Moray House School of Education University of Edinburgh Paterson's Land, Holyrood Road Edinburgh EH8 8AQ
Tel. 0131 651 6236     Fax 0131 651 6234
email Paul.Nisbet at ed.ac.uk
http://callcentrescotland.org.uk
http://www.AdaptedDigitalExams.org.uk
http://www.booksforall.org.uk  

_________________________________________________

-----Original Message-----
From: senit-bounces at lists.becta.org.uk
[mailto:senit-bounces at lists.becta.org.uk] On Behalf Of Adrian Higginbotham
Sent: 18 January 2008 10:52
To: senit at lists.becta.org.uk
Subject: RE: [senit] Switch accessible electronic books

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