What I did on my summer holidays.

[Janina Sajka]

Part of the problem is that creating braille or tape versions is generally 
a "one-off" done by hand from a printed page. Not very efficient. What 
we're trying to eingineer with NISO/DAISY, and with our participation in 
the OEBF, is access to the underlying text in a well-marked-up XML (or 
SGML). If we can get publishers to:

1.)	Use good markup;
2.)	Allow us to build a server-based delivery system;

we should be able to do much much better. But, Saqib, don't hold your 
breath! <grin>

I do think this can work, eventually. Either, the publishers files, as 
sold, would be directly accessible, or we would use an AFB server, or an 
RNIB server, etc., etc., to re-package the contents in the NISO/DAISY 
wrapper. I call this "Electronic Chafee," by the way. We're working on 
this in my office--it's one of my long term goals.

One more note about Chafee ...

While it's helped us here in the States, it has harmed everyone else. 
Here's why. The old way, before there was a Chafee Amendment, had the U.S. 
National Library Service for the Blind (and other agneices) requesting 
permission by hand, one book at a time. Well, it took no extra effort to 
request international rights, as well as national (U.S.) rights when they 
did it this way. Now, under Chafee, there's no rights request, because 
that's what Chafee is--a blanket check on national rights. So, no 
international rights are being requested by anyone here in the States, and 
it's slower and harder for libraries/agencies outside of the States to get 
this.

 On Mon, 28 Jan 2002, 
Saqib Shaikh wrote:

> Hi Janina,
> 
> I was really happy to hear that we'll be getting Daisy books in the spring!
> 
> What you say about "getting permission from the publishers" hits home right
> enough. While this law is on the verge of changing here in the UK it means:
> 1. Books are rediculously out of date. The most recent braille title on
> computing we have is the MS-DOS 5.0 users manual!
> 2. Tapes are also out of date. I wanted a Tanenbaum book for my hardware
> course (something like 5th editicion 2001). 4th edition would have been ok
> but I got 1st edition, 1978. Three years before I was born! So I got to
> learn about how computers were long before I was thought of <grin>
> 3. We're also excluded from the US National Braille Library's ebraille
> initiative and also the bookshare project.
> 4. To finish off my ranting I did the following research a year and a half
> ago before I started my degree. Following the findings I have given up on
> books in special formats and just have a humna reader.
> Findings:
> I was told that a thousand page computer science text would take approx 1.5
> years to put onto tape. Approx 3-5 years to put into braille.
> A braille/taping centre at a nearby university offered to do the job until
> they realised that nobody knew anything about squiggly brackets etc and sad
> no can do. Finally, I looked into putting a book into braille privately from
> two different sources. Both stated that they would charge approx £30 or $50
> per hour, making a grand total of 10 thousand pounds approx fifteen thousand
> dollars.
> 
> I'll leave you with that thought.
> 
> Saqib
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Janina Sajka" <janina at afb.net>
> To: <speakup at braille.uwo.ca>
> Sent: Monday, January 28, 2002 2:29 AM
> Subject: Re: What I did on my summer holidays.
> 
> 
> > I think Kirk got it about right below. Especially the part about "summer,"
> > because it was certainly unseasonally warm in Toronto last week! <grin>
> >
> > One note about the 15/16 ips, four-track cassettes as specialized media.
> > This format was defined explicitly as a specialized format for blind users
> > of specially produced content. One can think of this format as a kind of
> > analog tape intellectual property protection scheme. We can hope and dream
> > of a day when we don't need such things, but we need them now if we're
> > going to have access to large quantities of published books in a
> > format/medium that really works for us.
> >
> > I should note that many countries are jealous of the U.S.' Chafee
> > Amendement. In most other countries (though not all), organizations
> > producing braille or audio (and soon the DAISY format) need to get
> > permission in writing from copyright holders before they can begin to
> > produce a title. This takes a lot of time, and, of course, producing
> > titles takes a lot of time to. One side benefit of the Chafee Amendment
> > means that titles can be made available much more quickly than before.
> >
> > The goal, of course, is to get as many titles produced in the DAISY format
> > as quickly as possible, and to get them into users' hands as quickly as
> > possible. Another goal is to give users a wide range of choices in the
> > technology they use to "read" this content. There are already some
> > hardware devices that 'play" DAISY titles--and there will be more. There
> > are also software players already--and there will be many more of these,
> > on all the OS used by us.
> >
> > So, I am very glad that Kirk was with us last week. The Digital Talking
> > Book technology is going to be very important to our community, and we
> > need the widest range of experience and viewpoint in getting the basics
> > right so that anyone and everyone who qualifies can participate.
> >
> > PS: If you live in the U.K., you will have the option of titles in DAISY
> > late this spring. Here in the States, we'll have to wait a bit longer.
> >
> >
> > --
> >
> > Janina Sajka, Director
> > Technology Research and Development
> > Governmental Relations Group
> > American Foundation for the Blind (AFB)
> >
> > Email: janina at afb.net Phone: (202) 408-8175
> >
> > Chair, Accessibility SIG
> > Open Electronic Book Forum (OEBF)
> > http://www.openebook.org
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Speakup mailing list
> > Speakup at braille.uwo.ca
> > http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
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> Speakup at braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> 

-- 
	
				Janina Sajka, Director
				Technology Research and Development
				Governmental Relations Group
				American Foundation for the Blind (AFB)

Email: janina at afb.net		Phone: (202) 408-8175

Chair, Accessibility SIG
Open Electronic Book Forum (OEBF)
http://www.openebook.org