DAISY Technical Meeting November 2023
RNIB is delighted to invite DAISY members, friends, and supporters to a day of in-person technical discussions about topics of interest for DAISY libraries. The outcome of these meetings will help to shape DAISY projects, technical developments, and collaboration between members.
Thanks to everyone who voted in August’s poll to find the highest priority topics for our members. The outline agenda is based on the responses received.
The event is kindly hosted by Google in central London.
Agenda
0830 Arrival and registration
0900 Welcome, housekeeping and overview of the day
0915-1100 Reading Apps and Devices
We have seen major advances in the availability of Born Accessible digital books from mainstream publishers. And we know that libraries serving persons with disabilities continue to deliver materials to their patrons. However, this content means nothing unless there is a Reading System or App which provides a great reading experience to persons with print disabilities.
In this session we have an opportunity to get inside the heads of leaders who are building Reading Systems. Some of the questions we will address are: What will come? How do we meet the needs of non-geeks? How can the community help?
1100-1130 Break
1130-1230 Artificial Intelligence assisted production and conversion
As we move to the next segment of our meeting, we will dive into experimental approaches examining the role of artificial intelligence in the production and remediation of accessible digital documents. Let’s discuss the groundbreaking possibilities this technology might offer for enhancing digital accessibility. Please come prepared to share whether you currently use AI in your workflows, and the results of any experimentation – both good and bad.
1230-1330 Lunch
1330-1445 Production Tools
Open-source tools and standards collectively developed by DAISY Consortium form the backbone of accessible production in the DAISY Community. In this session we will focus on one of the most widely used production tools, DAISY Pipeline. We will talk about new developments and new user friendly incarnation, improved development processes and collaborative approaches for accelerating the future developments and worldwide adoption. In addition, the session will also include discussions on production workflows and possible improvements to DAISY standards.
1445-1515 Break
1515-1545 Working with publisher ebook files
In Washington DC earlier this year many DAISY members explained that files from mainstream publishers are now integral to their production processes. In this session we will explore how members are using mainstream publications to generate versions in different formats and the workflows to upgrade accessibility. Several members are assessing mainstream publications for accessibility, and we’ll learn about DAISY and other evaluation tools being used, and identify unmet requirements for the same.
1545-1615 Sharing accessible titles
With the implementation of the Marrakesh Treaty and ever-increasing collaboration within the DAISY Consortium, there is a great appetite for the exchange of accessible titles between library services serving people with print disabilities. However, whilst there is an enabling legal framework and good intentions, many technical challenges exist for exchanging titles at scale. In this section we’ll uncover the pain points and hopefully some potential solutions.
1615-1630 Next steps and closing
As the technical meeting draws to a close, we will summarize the actionable next steps, and where possible, responsibilities and timelines.
The meeting registration form has now closed. If you would like to attend the meetings please contact us. There is no option for remote attendance of the Technical Meetings however registration is open for the Accessible Publishing Conference Webinar.