DAISY IMPLEMENTATION IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

Dipendra Manocha
National Association for the Blind, India

Adaptation of DAISY Standards in production and distribution of content in accessible format is extremely important for enable resource sharing and getting the content generated in accessible format in most economical manner. The production processes also reduces the time taken in creation of accessible format. The format also gives much richer reading experience by providing feature rich content with navigation etc.

In spite of the obvious benefits, implementation of DAISY standards in introduction of digital talking books in developing countries has many challenges.

1. Support services to persons with blindness or low vision are provided by innumerable small organizations. There is an absence of central strong organization or an umbrella organization.
2. Basic IT tools such as Screen reading software, TTS and OCR are not available in local languages.
3. Due to the lack of local language support, basic IT literacy among persons with vision impairment is extremely poor
4. Users do not have affordable Digital books playback equipment.
5. Current managers and technical staff of the talking book production centres lack technical knowledge. There fore, there is strong opposition to adopt change.
6. Lack of awareness about the true potential of the digital Accessible Information System.

To look for solutions for developing countries, with the initiatives of Japanese Society for Rehabilitation of Persons with Disability (JSRPD). Tokyo, Japan and its then director Mr. Hiroshi Kawamura an initiative with the name of DAISY For All was taken by the DAISY Consortium in the year 2003. The DAISY For All Project was conceived by the standing committee of the DAISY Consortium on the developing countries. This Project is funded by NIPPON Foundation. The objective of the project is to encourage production and dissemination of Digital Talking Books in the developing countries and to provide information in accessible format to the persons with blindness in developing countries in their local languages. This is being done through creation of content in the local language and developing playback and talking book authoring tools that support local language content.

Following are the major streams of action taken under this project

Focal Point Development

The focal points are being developed to produce and disseminate local knowledge contents in DAISY format as a catalyst in the country. Focal points are being provided with consultation, basic production/service units consisting of computer based production system, end user playback systems, on-site trainings for production and management, transportable training/ presentation equipment, and necessary software licenses.

International Trainers Training

Core trainers are being trained to support on-site training at focal points. Each focal point has an opportunity to send at least one core technical staff to this training.

Open Source Software Development

DFA has been working on the development of local languages support for playback/production software tools. The activities undertaken under the DFA project for software development includes: An open source DAISY Playback software development, open source Digital Content authoring software development, local language adaptations of software etc.

DAISY Implementations

DFA 2003

Regional Center in India and Thailand were established.

DFA 2004

Focal Point in Sri Lanka and Malaysia were established.

DFA 2005

Focal point in Nepal, Bangladesh, Indonesia and Vietnam were established.

Achieved solutions:

Development of AMIS

Through Open Source Development strategy, free of charge software tool, AMIS was produced by the project to support affordable, accessible and sustainable multimedia publications to be shared around the world.

Its new version was released in October and is available at http://amis.sf.net. You can freely use AMIS to play and enjoy DAISY digital talking books on your computer. This software is available in English, Japanese, Thai, Hindi, Malay, Vietnamese, Indonesian, Bangla, Nepalese and Sinhala languages.

Affordable analogue to digital transfer system: Package of multi channel sound-card, adapted cassette player which can play in normal and double speed and can provide audio output from all tracks of the cassette is developed at highly affordable cost. Using this system 8 times speed of conversion can be achieved. This system was developed at the New Delhi DFA Resource centre.

Open source DAISY Player in Thai and English Languages. TAB Player was developed at the DFA Resource centre in Thailand.

Telephone based DAISY Book reading system: This system too is recently introduced in Thailand with the efforts of the DFA resource centre in Thailand. This system allows a user to dial into a phone number and automated voice prompts let the user lets the user to listen to any book stored in the library created for this system.

TTS Developments: almost all resource centres and focal points have established contacts with universities and research organizations to develop local language text to speech systems. Such TTS are already available to our community in Thai, Hindi, Bangla, Tamil and Marathi languages.

Follow-up trainings: Resource centres and focal points are providing continuous trainings many small and big organizations in production of Digital talking Books and provide assistance to establish digital book production units in these organizations. JSRPD provides license of the production software at no cost to any non-commercial organization in the developing countries who get trained in the use of these software. This has resulted in upsurge in quality digital accessible content development in local languages in these countries.

Networking and coordination: the DFA project has also resulted in creation a network among smaller organizations in these countries. This has resulted in content sharing among organizations which results in availability of much better choice of content for the end user.

Contact Information

DFA Project Secretariat
Mr. Hiroshi Kawamura - project Manager
Ms. Misako Nomura (Acting Project Manager)
C/o Information Center,
Japanese Society for Rehabilitation of persons with Disabilities (JSRPD)

E-mail: nomura@dinf.ne.jp
Tel: +81-3-5909-8280
Fax: +81-3-5909-8284

Regional Centers

Dipendra Manocha (Assistant Project Manager)
Regional Support Center in India
dipendra.manocha@gmail.com
Tel: +91-9313832323

Monthian Buntan(Assistant Project Manager)
Regional Support Center in Thailand
m_buntan@tab.or.th

Ms. Miki Azuma
International Training and Technical Support Coordinator
E-mail: azuma@daisy-for-all.org