Seminar on Development of DAISY

Keynote Speech

Hiroshi Kawamura

Director, Department of Social Rehabilitation, Research Institute, National
Rehabilitation Center for Persons with Disabilities

Good evening ladies and gentleman.
Thank you for introduction, my name is Hiroshi Kawamura. I am going to spend about 20 minutes and talk about the theme of the day and also explain how each of the participants can join our discussion. There will be a presentation on the screen but it is only in text, most of my presentation will be verbal explanation so please do not mind on the screen.

So my interpretation of today's theme is DAISY and SMIL, and how we can evolve them in the future.
First of all, I would like to make clear why DAISY is the matter. I believe most of you here already know well about DAISY. Maybe some of you may not know well about DAISY, so I would like to ask you how many of you do not know about DAISY, whether it is audio talking book or multi media. Please raise your hand. No one? Excellent! Everyone has already experienced it. That's very encouraging. Thank you very much. That makes my presentation much easier. So why DAISY? The most important thing about DAISY is that it is the technology in which the image, audio and text are synchronized. As the result we can increase accessibilities for visual or hearing impaired persons, deaf/blind persons, dyslexia, persons with physical disabilities if they have adequate user interface. You do not have to produce different contents. You can access same contents. That is great significance of DAISY from the functional point of view. There are lot of different cases, for example people with visual disabilities, there are totally blind people who lost their eye sight in the early time of their life. In that case they usually read Braille. However people lose their eye sight when they are aging, in that case they do not necessarily read Braille, weak eye sighted people want to enlarge the text when they read. They have various needs among people with visual disabilities. Also they would like to utilize their remaining eye sights and hear as much as possible and like to learn Braille gradually. And DAISY can accommodate their various needs. Supporting their social participation includes increasing their job opportunities, giving chance to judge who they should vote in election and also broadening their circle of the friendship, and also giving chance to get to know the people they had never met before. From the view point of safety and security, they need enough information when they move around. We had two earthquakes that measured magnitude 6.8 and 7 when today's presenters arrived in Japan and they said they couldn't sleep well at that night. There was broadcasting news about tsunami (tidal wave ) and we all watched closely what would happen, however that information provision system was not working correctly for the first hour if the tidal wave comes then people should have that information early enough so that they can escape safely. This is very critical information for them. So that what our presenters experienced regarding obtaining necessary information at the right time and then what we should do at a time of disaster or accident. So we have to have the information tool which we can rely on safely, and DAISY is targeting all those information opportunities.

Why DAISY? When we say accessibility we have a historical background. The text-based PC communication had been very useful for people with visual impairment. However graphical user interface which is now very popular in the internet world is reducing the accessibility for visually impaired persons which made them very frustrated because their accessibility has to shut off once again. At that time World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) raised the issue to establish bridgehead of information accessibility among the world of the internet. And people with visually impairment actively joined this process as well and contributed to make guidelines of accessibility which resulted in great achievement. However there are things we have not done yet. Among them there are fields of cognitive and intellectual disabilities. Those people are eager to have non-verbal information, information which is not described by words, they are more like actions and gestures. Generally we can use videos or animations to convey information to them. We have to consider how to ensure and develop information accessibility for those who cannot understand written information. In that case, we need to highlight the concept of the "easy to read". In that sense, if we have capability to transform same contents including images in the way each user can understand. And this is the technology offered by DAISY, so I think we can identify DAISY technology as the great significance in the area of the easy-to-understand.

You can see A, M, I, S on the screen, and Ms. Marisa DeMeglio will talk about AMIS following my presentation, so I am not going to give you its detail. But the flexible user interface can be connected with DAISY to secure the that it is easy to understand. That's our belief.

For those who are with mental disabilities they desperately want to expand their own world and participate in society. In case of disasters, they would like to cooperate with their neighbors to secure the safety for themselves. Bethel system was communication system which was developed by the members of Bethel Home in Hokkaido. It enabled real-time communication by multi channels simultaneously. It can handle moving pictures. That means some information which cannot be well described in text can be handled with this system. Non-verbal communication can be possible with this system. So from the view point of both verbal and non-verbal communication system, I think many people anticipate future development of DAISY.

When you look at developing countries, 80 - 90% of the total population of disability lives in those countries. The majority of those who have special needs are in developing countries. So when we try to set up a global standard, we have to focus on developing countries as well. The point is that real global standard should be accessible by everyone including people in developing countries. In those countries in most cases, those with special needs should be supported by persons who can read and write. However just imagine, a person with visual disability has family who is all illiterates, how can he/she obtain something to read. I am saying that people has special needs for information accessibility only when they have ability to read. Those who cannot read are forced to put in the same situation where persons with disabilities have handicap among literate people in society regarding information and communication issues. So what we have to do is promoting literacy and at the same time establishing means of information and communication as well when we consider the developing countries.

And why DAISY is nessesary? Because it is open standard. What is open standard? It is a standard which is open. On the other hand, I will mention about non-open standard. One of the examples is MP3 which is a compression technology to distribute music and it is dominated by a group. It costs when we use the technology. It is also suggested to develop certain technology that no one can use even if you pay. It is what we call closed standard.

On the contrary, DAISY Consortium has been developing DAISY2.0 and then 2.02 and 3 step by step. All these developments are open source and you do not have to pay any fee. Also you can use on the major platforms like Windows, Mac, UNIX and Linux free of charge. We call it interoperability. DAISY is something you can use on the different systems in common. The basis of standard is developed and managed by W3C. W3C has the policy, that is, every development is done openly just like the policy of DAISY Consortium. SMIL, which is today's theme, is the one of the open standards that was developed by W3C. Starting from version 1.0, we have now version 2.0 and 2.1 should be completed by the end of this year. Also 3.0 will be drastically developed next year.

DAISY 3 was adapted as ANSI/Z39.86, 2002. ANSI is American Standard just like JIS in Japan

ANSI/NISO Z39.86 is endorsed as the official standard file format in the USA in July 2004 as a result of 2 years' research and publishers of text books in the US have to provide electric format if required. Considering ADA (American with Disability Act) publishers might provide electric files according to requirements to prevent to be sued.

The fourth reason about why DAISY is good? I think because it is the standard adopted worldwide. Braille libraries in Japan swiftly adopted DAISY. From April this year PTR1 which can record and replay contents is approved as daily life equipment and is provided to the persons with disabilities free of charge. Many persons with disabilities in the other countries would envy this decision by Japanese Government. That will contribute to more DAISY installation in Japan.
In Sweden DAISY is the only talking book that is produced officially. Moreover Dyslexia organization is asking all text books in DAISY. There are 1200 college students who use text books in DAISY. Among Them I heard 400 students are visually impaired and 800 students are dyslexic. In England it was recently reported that more than 1 million DAISY books were lended out. In Netherlands DAISY is national standard as well. Also in Thai and India DAISY is getting more and more popular.

Why do we anticipate SMIL and then DAISY to be revised? I just want to talk taking up an example of disasters prevention. When we research disaster prevention, the most important thing is that we have to learn from those without voice. That means we have to learn from the words and voices of victims of disasters. Why did they have to lose their lives? We do not know exactly what happened to them at the time of the catastrophes because they are not with us anymore. All we can do is getting information from survivors. What would be necessary to save people in the case of disaster? One thing is that people should learn on regular basis how to evacuate immediately and the information of disasters prevention must be well reached. Another thing is that people with special needs should get support from appropriate people at the time of emergency.

Everything necessary has to be done beforehand. For instance, in Keyaki-no-Sato which is the institution for people with severe autism they take only 5 minutes to evacuate in preparation for fire. They used to take 30 minutes at first.

In Bethel home where people with mental disabilities live they have similar kind of training called social skill training and they discuss what they should do at the case of disasters.

So the plan for disaster prevention has to be established by all people who engaged and that would be possible only when ensured access to information and communication. We have to mobilize all the possible channels so that necessary information can be accessed when needed to save lives.

There are couples of things I think are very important. One of them is the real time contents of information of disaster whether you have disabilities or not. And that must be "easy to understand" contents that can be searched after broadcasting or obtained locally on the net. Also it is extremely important to share the experiences after the disasters. Interactive real time communication system is imperative through all processes including those who have communication disabilities.

So we want to raise the issue about why SMIL is necessary. The speakers today will give you presentations about what is possible and what is expected by SMIL. There are four presentations and after that we have 45 minutes for discussion and we would like you to join the discussion. That is all for my keynote speech and I like to ask the next presenter to come up to the podium. Thank you very much.

Note: This speech was dictated by simultaneous interpretation.