MALAYSIA'S EXPERIENCE IN THE IMPLEMENTATION OF DAISY
WONG YOON LOONG (M.Ed)
COMMITTEE ON LIBRARY AND INFORMATION SERVICE FOR THE BLIND
NATIONAL COUNCIL FOR THE BLIND MALAYSIA (NCBM)
The Digital Accessible Information System (DAISY) was first introduced in Malaysia during the 2nd International Training Workshop on Computerised Braille Production in 1995 sponsored by the Japan Braille Library. In 1996, Malaysia through the National Library and the National Council for the Blind Malaysia (NCBM) participated in the field-testing of the system where some blind volunteers gave very useful comments on behalf of developing countries.
NCBM took up the responsibility of promoting and implementing DAISY in Malaysia. NCBM organised a few training workshops to create awareness and to train producers of talking-books from member-organisations and the Department of Special Education in 1998 (sponsored by Japan International Cooperation Agency), 2002 (supported by the DAISY Consortium) and August 2004 (DAISY For All). They familiarized themselves with the use of the Sigtuna DAR 3 and Mystudio pc (more suitable for blind technicians). In 2002, NCBM joined the DAISY Consortium as an Associate Member and was granted the licence to use the recording software and to receive technical support.
Even though Malaysia was among the earliest developing countries to be acquainted with DAISY, our progress was very slow. This is due to:
- The "wait and see" attitude. We want to see whether others can succeed or fail before making our own decision.
- Organisation providing talking-books to their visually impaired users were not prepared to invest large sum of money initially required to replace the production tools to switch from analog to digital.
- The cost of playback machines is too costly for the users. Free software playback tools were not accessible to them as most of them do not have their own personal computers.
- Our blind audio technicians are not computer literate and need more time to be trained.
The development of DAISY in Malaysia received a great boost when NCBM got a grant from the DAISY For All (DFA) in 2004. As the focal point, NCBM provided training, loan of equipment and coordinated the activities of DAISY. 4 out of 5 member-organisation of NCBM including the Department Of Special Education are involved in the various stages of development and promotion of DAISY in Malaysia. We are adopting the Table Of Contents Format for leisure reading and Audio And Text Synchronization for textbooks.
As at April 2006, the number of DAISY titles are as follows:
English fiction 55 titles
English non-fiction 6 titles
Malay fiction 38 titles
Malay non-fiction 6 titles
Mandarin 19 titles
We have a weekly talking newspaper in English and a monthly magazine for students in Malay.
There are approximately 80 playback machines in Malaysia all owned by organization for and of the blind and schools. Software players such as the TPB and TAB players are widely being used by the blind.
NCBM is embarking in a major project to digitize the 1,500 titles of talking-book currently in Malaysia to DAISY format. This project is expected to be completed in about 3 years.
In conclusion I wish to say that DAISY is progressing slowly but surely in Malaysia. In the not distant future, it will be the preferred format of distributing talking-books for the blind. However, we need to now consider extending this wonderful format to the learning disabled who can also benefit greatly from DAISY. We are also prepared to offer our expertise to other Malay speaking countries in this region such as Indonesia and Brunei.
Thank you.