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Abstract

SESSION1: Provision of Textbooks in the DAISY Format in the USA

George Kerscher

Secretary General, DAISY Consortium

The United States is very interesting, because some things are going well, and other things are going badly. In this presentation I will be talking about the efforts, both legal and technical, in elementary and high school, which serves students up to the age of 18. I will also discuss the efforts in higher education.

In brief, all the organizations serving students with disabilities, i.e. Recording for the Blind & Dyslexic and Bookshare.org are providing DAISY Books. I will describe the differences between the two organizations. I will also discuss the identification of DAISY XML as the format identified as the National Instructional Materials Accessibility Format (NIMAS), which requires publishers of textbooks to provide DAISY XML files into a national repository.

In higher education both Bookshare.org and RFB & D deliver DAISY books, but the number of titles available are smaller, because of the wide range of topics needed in higher education. Because Bookshare.org and RFB & D cannot keep up with the demand, publishers are also being asked to provide their files, but the format is not specified. In addition, publishers are starting to provide digital textbooks to college students, but the accessibility of these are causing problems. This creates a legal situation where publishers are leaving themselves at risk, because there are laws that require access to information.

In short, the largest problem is that publishers are not being encouraged to build accessible DAISY books for sale from the beginning, and the organizations that provide services are not working with the publishers to solve the problem.