- free of charge to anyone anywhere
- run for up to 1 hour
- have capacity for up to 500 participants to experience and interact with live
- archived for later viewing if you missed the live session
Congratulations to the winners of the Accessible Books Consortium International Excellence Awards who were announced yesterday.
The worthy winners are Macmillan Learning in the publisher category and Fondazione LIA for the initiative category. Both winners are applauded for their achievements in improving the accessibility of ebooks and other digital publications for people who are blind, visually impaired or otherwise 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. In the past, winners have been announced at a much anticipated annual awards ceremony at the London Book Fair. Unfortunately, however, the London Book Fair was cancelled this year following the outbreak of the coronavirus in Europe and the winners were advised via email of this honour.
Read the full report on the ABC website
Read MoreWe are happy to announce that we’re scheduling several webinars on accessible publishing and reading. This is in response to multiple challenges faced by conferences around the world due to Coronavirus, as well as feedback from the wider DAISY community expressing interest in online training resources.
These webinars will be:
- free of charge to anyone anywhere
- run for up to 1 hour
- have capacity for up to 500 participants to experience and interact with live
- archived for later viewing if you missed the live session
Register your interest to receive details of the webinar schedule.
If you have an accessible publishing presentation to propose delivering as part of this webinar series please contact us with the details.
Read MoreThe shortlist for the 2020 ABC International Excellence Awards for Accessible Publishing have been announced and the winners will be presented at an awards ceremony on March 10, 2020 at the London Book Fair. There are two awards presented in this category and the finalists are:
Publishers Award
- Argentina—Ediciones Godot
- Canada—House of Anansi Press
- USA—Macmillan Learning
Initiative Award
- Italy—Fondazione LIA
- Lithuania—EIFL, Electronic Information for Libraries
- United Arab Emirates—Kalimat Foundation for Children Empowermen
Many congratulations to all the finalists who have worked so hard to improve the delivery accessible content to readers around the world. Further details about the accessibility awards can be found on the Accessible Books Consortium Website.
Full details of all the awards categories can be found at the Bookseller website and we look forward to announcing the winners here in March.
Read MoreThe call for abstracts is now open for the second Tactile Reading Conference, which will be held in Oslo, Norway 29-30 April 2021.
The conference will bring together:
- Practitioners, developers and innovators in the field of tactile reading
- Academics in various research areas
- Commercial companies
The conference will promote best practices and inspire new ideas for research, and get people together for future collaboration. Relevant topics include:
- The Neuroscience of Tactile Reading and Understanding
- An Inclusive Approach to Early Intervention in Kindergarten and School
- An Inclusive Approach to Braille and Literacy
- Tactile Graphics and 3D Material
- Tactile Reading and Universal Design
Practitioners and researchers are encouraged to submit an abstract for 20 or 40 minutes presentations. It is also possible to give a poster presentation. All presentations will be in English.
Further details are available at www.tactilereading.org
Deadline: May 15th 2020
We are delighted to announce the first full release of the Ace by DAISY App. Many publishing professionals are already familiar with the Ace command line tool for accessibility checking within EPUB workflows and this new desktop version builds on test version released a couple of months ago to make testing EPUB files from a desktop an even easier process.
Ace by DAISY helps to ensure EPUB content conforms with the EPUB Accessibility 1.0 specification, allowing all readers to access and enjoy your content irrespective of print disabilities or access requirements. The Ace App is designed to allow you to quickly test EPUB files through a familiar graphical user interface and highlight any issues which need to be addressed. Users will still need some understanding of the EPUB specification and accessibility requirements in order to resolve any problems found, but to make that process easier the Ace App is integrated with the DAISY Accessible Publishing Knowledge Base proving quick links to the relevant reference in this essential resource.
The Ace App is not intended to replace the command line tool, which remains the ideal solution for those wishing to test multiple documents or to integrate the testing process directly into production workflows. Technically the testing process taking place behind the scenes is identical on both the Ace by DAISY command line tool and the Ace App, so this is simply an easier way for some users to access the same process.
Get started by visiting the Ace App Github page for instructions on download and installation.
Read MoreDAISY Consortium is pleased to announce the test release of Obi, the popular open source navigable audio book creation tool. Obi produces books conforming to the accessible EPUB 3, DAISY 3 and DAISY 2.02 specifications.
Version 4.5 RC is the release candidate inviting feedback from experienced users of Obi.
It presents new and enhanced audio processing functionality to increase/decrease the volume, fade in, fade out, or normalize audio, and also incorporates the old functionality in the new audio processing interface.
Other enhancements include capability of adding comment to a Todo phrase for providing hint to the editors, ability to mark Todo at the exact time point in a phrase, option to view peak meter inside the main Obi window, option to use single key shortcuts for recording in the TOC view along with other improvements and bug fixes.
New Obi also comes with updated French language pack. Many thanks to BrailleNet for updating the translations.
Please visit Obi Release Notes page to learn more about the release and to download the installers.
For feedback, comments and bug reports please contact us via email: obi.feedback@gmail.com
Read MoreThe DAISY Consortium were delighted to be part of the Digital Book World 2019 Awards, with the DAISY Award for Accessibility in Publishing. It’s been great to see accessibility put under the spotlight at such a high-profile event, and our thanks to the Digital Book World team for their commitment to this important topic and making this award possible.
We have had some incredibly interesting discussions throughout this process, finding the decision making very difficult at every stage—deciding the finalists, and particularly in selecting a winner. All of the entrants have done wonderful work in progressing the accessibility of published materials for people with print disabilities and should be applauded. We would have loved to present awards to everyone! Our finalists were:
- Hachette Livre, winner of the International Excellence Award for Accessibility at the London Book Fair 2018 and a passionate adopter of EPUB 3 and Ace by DAISY which is a standard part of their workflow. You can read more about their initiatives at our interview with Luc Audrain.
- Kogan Page, producing born accessible EPUB 3 publications having reworked their schema and workflows to ensure full accessible content. You can read more about their extraordinary commitment to accessibility in their case study: https://inclusivepublishing.org/blog/accessibility-in-publishing-a-case-study-from-kogan–page/
- Macmillan Learning are the first publisher to gain Benetech GCA accreditation with their born accessible publications. Read more about this at https://inclusivepublishing.org/blog/rachel-comerford-the-trailblazer-behind-macmillan-learning/
- and for their ongoing commitment to accessibility, including innovative work on accessibility metadata, ensuring for the first time that essential information about the accessibility of titles is preserved and made available to consumers in their book selection process together with their commitment to the needs of students within their Bookshelf reading app, we are thrilled to announce that our winner is VitalSource. Read more about their work in the DAISY Planet article from of VitalSource.
The DAISY Consortium were also very excited to be awarded an Outstanding Achievement Award for their work on the Ace by DAISY EPUB accessibility checking tool. Ace is a free open source tool available as a command line tool and as a desktop application. It can be integrated at any point in the ebook production workflow and ensures that EPUB files conform with the EPUB Accessibility Specification. Our congratulations to the development team behind Ace for this achievement.
For the full list of all the winners at the DBW Awards Ceremony see the Digital Book World press release.
Read MoreIn Partnership with Digital Book World the DAISY Consortium is celebrating the work of organizations in mainstream publishing who have made significant accessibility developments over the last year. After reviewing a truly impressive range of nominations, the difficult decision was made to shortlist the following finalists for the award:
- Hachette Livre
- Kogan Page
- Macmillan
- VitalSource
The winner will be announced at the Digital Book World Conference on September 10th.
Read MoreFollowing feedback from our users who found the Ace by DAISY command line tool useful but in some instances challenging to use, we are delighted to bring you the new Ace by DAISY App.
The Ace by DAISY App is a desktop application available for Windows, MacOS and Linux, allowing EPUB accessibility testing directly from your desktop, helping to ensure your EPUB content conforms with the EPUB Accessibility 1.0 specification, and allowing all readers to access and enjoy your content.
Note this is a release candidate and you may encounter minor bugs which we will work to address in the coming months. For more information on this release visit the Ace by DAISY App page on Inclusive Publishing.
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