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Daisy Software
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Daisy is a special format designed to provide accessible books for people with disabilities, especially reading disabilities and blindness. A Daisy book represents a quantum leap in the world of accessibility over old systems like books on tape. With a Daisy book, you can see the text on the screen and have it highlighted while the computer reads the book in a clear spoken word voice. This is especially useful for people with low vision and reading disabilities. If you are totally blind, the Daisy book will be completely accessible by searchable text using your screen reading software and you can still listen to the book in a clear spoken word voice as it is read by the Daisy software. Furthermore, there are some standalone Daisy players that will play the book for you even when a computer is not available. If you are looking for a particular phrase or word somewhere in the text of the book, you can go to that phrase or word and have the computer read from there. This can be especially helpful when you have to deal with technical material like electronics articles or electronics study material. The spoken word audio is very clear and most people will get used to it and enjoy it very quickly. With old cassette tape technology, it was nearly impossible to find a given spot somewhere in the book. With Daisy, it becomes a simple matter to search for the correct word or phrase, something like a chapter number or a specific word like "impedance". Another problem with cassette tapes was that they were very limited in capacity. In normal audio format, a cassette tape would hold 60 minutes of spoken word audio. In the Library of Congress four-track format, you could get considerably more audio on the same cassette tape at the expense of audio quality. Even so, a textbook might still result in a box of 10 cassette tapes that the user would have to keep straight and organized while reading through the book. The Daisy book format eliminates these problems because it has much more capacity, making it possible to fit an entire book on a single disc. Daisy books are not necessarily limited to being on a computer disk such as a CD, either. If a huge amount of storage were necessary, a DVD could be used instead. Also, because Daisy books are digital, they can be placed in online storage and downloaded directly by Handiham members with disabilities. This avoids a long wait for the Postal Service to deliver materials physically in the mail. It is more convenient and spontaneous for our users who want to get their study materials and articles in a timely manner. It is also less expensive for us to deliver this service because we do not have to create a physical disk or tape, package it, address it, and mail it out. Like anything new, the Daisy book format will take some getting used to. If you use Daisy software on your computer, you will have to take some time to learn the process. If you use a screen reader like Jaws, you will be happy to know that there are Jaws scripts for the open-source Daisy software called "Amis". Let's take a moment to talk about Amis. Amis is pronounced "AHH-MEE". As the name implies, Amis will soon become your friend, because it will help you read books as you have never read them before, with more control and accessibility than you ever thought possible. You may be wondering what Amis stands for and why it has that name. It stands for adaptive multimedia information system, A-M-I-S. AMIS is free of charge, open source DAISY book playback software. Essentially, this means that volunteers around the world have contributed their time and energy in the design of software especially for you and that they are making it available at no charge. Open-source projects often go through many generations and updates. Volunteers work on the projects on a time-available basis. Because volunteers already spend a lot of time on this kind of work, it is probably not fair to expect them to answer a lot of questions from new users. Generally, there are user forums of some type online where new users can easily find answers to commonly asked questions. Now, let's talk about how to get Amis. The place to start is by opening
your web browser and pointing it to the following link: Got it? Great! If you are using a screen reader like Jaws, read through
the entire page so that you can see the links to the Jaws scripts. These
may be of interest to you. Look for the download link and download and
install Amis. Now, it is not the purpose of this short article to teach
you how to use the software. We may be able to get to that in a future
article. For right now, I will tell you that you can take a look at a
sample Daisy book which is an article on antennas from Worldradio
magazine. I suggest downloading everything in the book's directory to your
hard drive in a special folder. Here is the link to the folder: You need to start the Amis application and open the filename ncc.html. This opens the article and you can begin exploring the text and listening as the book, or article in this case, is read to you. We do not offer tech support on Daisy at the moment, but expect to do training at Radio Camp sessions, which of course are available to our members, and later we will be doing some online training. Other resources: Daisy Consortium: Bookshare.org overview of Daisy: |
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Courage Center Handiham System ©2012 Courage Center Handiham System |