We are sorry to share the passing of Scott LaBarre, DAISY board member representing the National Federation of the Blind, USA, who passed away surrounded by his family on Saturday, December 10th 2022.
Scott championed the cause of accessible books for many years and was a leader in the long and successful campaign securing the Marrakesh Treaty. Scott joined the DAISY board in 2018, and was also a willing volunteer for our board working groups and participated enthusiastically in the online meetings held during the limitations of the global pandemic.
We owe an enormous debt of gratitude to Scott for his significant contribution to fulfilling DAISY’s mission to make information accessible to people with disabilities, wherever they live in the world.
Read the NFB Statement about Scott LaBarre. Read More
Many congratulations to the winners and finalists of the Accessible Books Consortium International Excellence Awards for Accessible Publishing, announced this week at The Guadalajara Book fair. The awards are divided into 2 categories:
Initiative Award
The finalists in this category were:
- Accessibility Task Force of the German Publishers and Booksellers Association (Germany)
- DAISY Lanka Foundation (Sri Lanka)
- Dorina Nowill Foundation for the Blind (Brazil)
- Kalimat Foundation (United Arab Emirates)
and we are delighted to announce that DAISY associate member, Dorina Nowill Foundation for the Blind in Brazil, received a special commendation from the judging panel.
Winner: Mr. Ashoka Bandula Weerawardhana, Sri Lanka
For the first time this award was presented to an individual, Mr. Ashoka Bandula Weerawardhana. Mr. Bandula has worked tirelessly to ensure that educational texts are produced in accessible formats in Sri Lanka, developing an efficient production workflow to provide Braille textbooks in Sinhala, Tamil and English using the most recent accessible reproduction techniques. The DAISY Lanka Foundation also engages in:
- promoting inclusive publishing
- developing standards/guidelines for accessible content production and
- facilitating a fair distribution platform in Sri Lanka.
Publisher Award
Finalists in this category were:
- Constantine Editores (Mexico)
- Kogan Page (UK)
- University of Michigan Press (USA)
Winner: Kogan Page, UK
Kogan Page was recognized for developing a production workflow that ensures its front list titles are fully accessible for people who are print disabled. The jury also cited Kogan Page’s advocacy of an accessible chain of distribution for people who are print disabled.
Nominees were judged on the criteria of outstanding leadership or achievements in improving the accessibility of ebooks or other digital publications for persons who are print disabled.
Read MoreThe short-list for the 2022 ABC International Excellence Awards in Accessible Publishing has been announced in advance of the awards ceremony to be held at the Guadalajara International Book Fair, on November 2022. There are two categories of awards, publishers and initiatives, and the following nominees were selected from nominations from around the globe:
Publishers
- Constantine Editores (Mexico)
- Kogan Page (UK)
- University of Michigan Press (USA)
Initiatives
- Accessibility Task Force of the German Publishers and Booksellers Association (Germany)
- DAISY Lanka Foundation (Sri Lanka)
- Dorina Nowill Foundation for the Blind (Brazil)
- Kalimat Foundation (United Arab Emirates)
A jury made up of representatives from publishers, organizations working in the field of accessibility, and organizations representing persons who are visually impaired, is charged each year with the difficult task of choosing finalists and selecting winners. Congratulations to all those shortlisted!
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During the annual conference of The American Printing House for the Blind, Dr. Craig Meador presented the DAISY Consortium with the Horizon Award. George Kerscher, Chief Innovations Officer for the DAISY Consortium, was proud to accept the award on behalf of DAISY, acknowledging how appropriate the name of the award is as there is an enhanced braille standard on the horizon!
In his introduction, Dr. Meador provided an excellent overview of the countries represented by the Consortium. The development of an enhanced braille standard, in conjunction with APH, has been a project that DAISY has been delighted to work on and, with APH now a full member of the Consortium, we look forward to welcoming them at our board meetings.
DAISY is very proud to receive this award, with our thanks to APH for their recognition and partnership.
Read MoreThe WIPO Accessible Books Consortium International Excellence Award 2022 is open for nominations. As in previous years, there are two categories for the awards, allowing both publishers and other initiatives to be celebrated for their work progressing accessibility in their respective fields.
Nominations are open until September 30th, and the winners will be announced during a ceremony in November at the Guadalajara International Book Fair in Mexico which will also be streamed online.
Visit the ABC International Awards page for the nomination form and details of the process.
Read MoreWe are delighted to announce updates to Ace (Accessibility Checker for EPUB) and the SMART:
Ace By DAISY
Ace by DAISY is the free, open source EPUB accessibility checking tool, created to assist in the evaluation of conformance to the EPUB Accessibility Specification, helping your company meet industry requirements of accessible procurement, and enabling you to produce higher quality, standards conformant publications.
Designed to assist content creators at any stage in their workflow Ace is available as both a command line tool for workflow integration and a desktop App for quick testing of titles. Updates to both the Ace Command Line Tool (v1.2.7) and the Ace App (v1.1.5) have been published to support the new EPUB Accessibility 1.1 specification (“Conformance and Discoverability Requirements for EPUB publications”), currently a W3C Candidate Recommendation Draft dated 07 June 2022. Other maintenance fixtures and an update to the DAISY Knowledge Base are also included.
The links for these updates can be found at:
- Ace GitHub release page: https://github.com/daisy/ace/releases/tag/v1.2.7
- Ace App GitHub release page: https://github.com/daisy/ace-gui/releases/tag/v1.1.5
SMART
A new version of the SMART tool is also available, allowing users to begin evaluating conformance to the new Accessibility 1.1 specification. This tool provides manual conformance checks necessary to ensure conformance with EPUB and WCAG requirements. Users will continue to have their reports initiated to check conformance with the EPUB Accessibility 1.0 specification, but they will be able to change the conformance settings to the 1.1 specification, which will then also let them choose WCAG 2.0 or 2.1 conformance. Accessibility 1.1 conformance will become the default when the specification gets to the next stage of Proposed Recommendation.
The other major changes with this update are:
- Users to be able to filter the success criteria in the conformance tab by the type of content they’re checking
- The conformance tab, which now includes a “Stats” box that shows how many success criteria have passed, failed, need checking, or are inapplicable.
Together, Ace by DAISY, SMART and the DAISY Accessible Publishing Knowledge Base provide the most complete method for accessibility conformance testing of EPUB publications.
Following approval at the AGM in May, the Annual Report of DAISY Consortium activities conducted in 2021 has now been published. With messages from our President and Treasurer, brief summaries of tool development, project activity, and training, along with contributions of highlights from DAISY Members.
You can download the report in EPUB format, or read it directly on our website.
Read MoreThe W3C has announced that the following documents are now W3C Candidate Recommendation Snapshots:
EPUB 3 defines a distribution and interchange format for digital publications and documents. The EPUB format provides a means of representing, packaging, and encoding structured and semantically enhanced web content — including HTML, CSS, SVG, and other resources — for distribution in a single-file container.
The full W3C announcement explains this important development in more details and provides information for implementation and feedback.
We provide overview detail on the EPUB format explaining why this format is so important for accessibility and the various specifications attached to it.
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The DAISY Consortium Annual General Meeting is being held virtually this year and we’re delighted to open the doors to the wider DAISY community.
In the general meeting we transact the formal business required under our articles and governing regulations, but there will also be presentations to showcase some of our work. The meeting takes place on May 24th at 15 UTC.
Register to attend and receive the related documents.
Read MoreThe Accessible Books Consortium (ABC) is inviting expressions of interest from organizations in developing and least developed countries for training and technical assistance in the production of accessible books.
The deadline for application is April 15th 2022. Further details and the application forms are available on the ABC website.
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