The DAISY Consortium are pleased to announce new releases for both versions of the Ace By DAISY EPUB accessibility checking tool: the Command Line Interface (CLI) and the Graphical User Interface (Ace App) versions 1.2.
These releases contains significant internal changes that address security issues, improve performance, and fix bugs at various levels of the project architecture. Crucially, DAISY Ace now uses the latest version of Deque’s Axe library.
There are also improvements for screen reader users including updated accessibility checks that match the latest W3C WCAG and ARIA specifications.
Both DAISY Ace CLI and the desktop Ace App depend on a number of third-party code libraries, which are up to date. As usual with DAISY Ace App releases, the latest revision of the DAISY Knowledge Base is included.
For more information on Ace by DAISY visit the Ace resource pages.
Read MoreW3C are pleased to announce the latest production-ready release of EPUBCheck, version 4.2.5, providing support for checking conformance to the EPUB 3.2 family of specifications. This is a maintenance release. Full details and release notes are available at [https://github.com/w3c/epubcheck/releases/tag/v4.2.5.
They are also excited to launch the EPUBCheck website at https://www.w3.org/publishing/epubcheck/. Visit this site to download the latest release of EPUBCheck and find useful resources about it.
The DAISY Consortium is proud to provide maintenance for EPUBCheck on behalf of W3C. This work is being funded through donations from organizations which use the EPUBCheck tool. Full details are available at the Publishing@W3C fundraising page.
Read MoreEDRLab have announced the release of Thorium 1.6, the latest version of the highly accessible free EPUB reader which can be installed for free on Windows, MacOS and Linux. With this new version Thorium offers support for DAISY 3 publications in its different variants: text, audio and text+audio. For more information on this exciting development you can access the full announcement and experience Thorium for yourself!
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Congratulations to George Kerscher, DAISY Consortium Chief Innovations Officer, for being awarded NISO Fellow for Lifetime Achievement in Information Access.
George was presented with the award at NISO Plus 2021 which was attended virtually. In his acceptance speech, George said:
Read More“it’s a tremendous honor and I look forward to the day when everything is published in way that people like me with disabilities can consume it”.
After reviewing many incredible activities taking place around the world which are working to advance the accessibility of publications, we are pleased to announce the recipient of the 2020 DAISY Consortium Award for Accessibility in Publishing is The Department of Canadian Heritage.
In 2019, Canadian Heritage announced an unprecedented initiative to encourage the Canadian book industry to integrate accessible publishing features into the production and distribution of digital books (ebooks and audio books). The program will support the production and distribution of accessible digital publications that can be used by everyone, including readers living with print disabilities. The initiative is supported by a funding program of CA$22.8M over 5 years. Canadian Heritage was recognized with this award for leading the way globally with this activity which will not only benefit readers in Canada, but also people reading Canadian publications around the world.
Richard Orme from DAISY said “We are delighted to award Canadian Heritage the 2020 DAISY Award for Accessibility in Publishing to celebrate this ground-breaking initiative which provides a shining example of how government agencies can promote and support publishing accessibility for people with print disabilities”
Congratulations to the Department of Canadian Heritage and the partner agencies implementing this wonderful enterprise.
Our thanks to Digital Book World who support the DAISY Award for Accessibility in Publishing.
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The DAISY Consortium is proud to have been named a winner of the ALPSP Awards for Innovation in Publishing 2020 for our work on WordToEPUB. This ground-breaking new tool offers a free, simple and straightforward method of converting structured Word documents to valid and accessible EPUB files.
The inspiration for the WordToEPUB tool was academic publishing, and in this time of Covid, educational materials are being digitized into accessible files that are a lifeline to students with disabilities unable to study at school. WordToEPUB has revolutionized the conversion process for many users already and this award will only help to improve awareness.
ALPSP were looking for “any new development, product, service or project which is both innovative and of significant value to scholarly communication. The winners must demonstrate excellence in terms of originality, innovation, value to the community, utility and long-term viability.”
DAISY were short-listed alongside 7 other very worthwhile initiatives selected from a pool of 34 applicants and we wish to congratulate everyone on their achievement.
WordToPUB is the work of many volunteers around the world, and on behalf of everyone involved we extend our thanks to ALPSP for the recognition this award brings.
Details of the award and all the finalists can be found on the ALPSP Innovation Awards page.
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The DAISY Consortium has published a white paper encouraging the use of Born Accessible EPUB 3 files for corporate, government and university publications and documents. This important piece of work recognizes the work of the publishing industry who have embraced EPUB 3 as their format of choice for ebooks and digital publishing and focuses on how this same approach should be used for all types of digital content, both online and offline:
It is time for companies and organizations to consider adopting modern digital publishing standards for their document output. Reading documents digitally is the norm today and it is taking place on smartphones, tablets, and on computers….Wonderful for printing and ubiquitous, PDF can only be made accessible after time-consuming, expensive remediation has been completed.
EPUB 3 provides the opportunity to significantly improve the accessibility of digital content for all readers, regardless of ability. Its many benefits include:
- EPUB 3 documents can be produced using existing document processes, negating the need for costly and time-consuming remediation processes.
- All modern word processors now support EPUB 3.
- There is a legal requirement for organizations to produce accessible documents
- Organizations can extend the reach and read-through of their documents
- EPUB 3 improves the reading experience for everyone. If it’s Born Digital, it should be Born Accessible
For further detail on this exciting new publication see our White Paper page which also provides links to the publication in a variety of formats.
Read MoreThe Association of Learned & Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP) have announced today their list of finalists for the Innovation in Publishing Award 2020 and we are delighted to announce that the DAISY Consortium tool WordToEPUB has been shortlisted. This ground breaking new tool offers a free, simple and straightforward method of converting structured Word documents to valid and accessible EPUB files.
“Applications for the awards were open to any new development, product, service or project which is both innovative and of significant value to scholarly communication. The winners must demonstrate excellence in terms of originality, innovation, value to the community, utility and long-term viability.”
The winner of this exciting award will be announced in September and we would like to congratulate everyone involved in the development of WordToEPUB as well the other finalists who we are very proud to be shortlisted alongside.
Full details of the shortlist are available on the ALPSP Innovation Awards page
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The second Tactile Reading event, planned for next year in Oslo, has now been extended to add a pre-conference day of workshops and demonstrations of new technology on April 28th.
The call for abstracts for the main conference which runs April 29th-30th has been extended to June 14th.
Registration will open in September.
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