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An Overview of the DAISY Format

Copyrighted books from Bookshare.org are available for download in two disability-specific formats: DAISY and digital grade 2 braille (BRF). Since DAISY is a relatively new format, we thought we should explain more about what it is, how it works, and why it's so great.

DAISY is the digital talking book standard, developed by an international consortium of libraries that serve people who have print disabilities. The DAISY standard was developed in order to enable a person who is blind or otherwise print disabled to access the information in a book with the same ease with which a sighted person accesses information in a print book. The usability of a DAISY digital book could be compared to that of a cassette tape, the format in which most accessible books were, until relatively recently, available. As audio tapes are fast becoming obsolete, the DAISY format was originally developed for the world of digital talking books delivered on CD, other portable media, or over the Internet.

The DAISY format is a file format standard for digital (electronic) books. In the same way that the HTML files that make up web pages or the ASCII of text format files are based on a standard, DAISY is just that, a standard format.

The goal of the DAISY effort is to take accessible books from the technology of twenty years ago (the audio cassette tape) and fast-forward to the future of digital media such as CDs, DVDs, and the Internet.

Navigation Ability

Books that support all of the navigation of the DAISY format include more capabilities than books on tape, such as:

• Book skimming: book can be "navigated" forward or backward by word, paragraph, page or chapter, so the reader can easily skim through the book to get a quick sense of its content.

• Going right to pages, chapters, section headers, etc.: When specific information or a reading assignment starts on page 37 or chapter 3, the reader can jump right to that location in the book.

• Support for Table of Contents and an Index: These methods of referencing information in books are supported by the DAISY standard. For example, if the DAISY book includes an index, a reader can find a referenced word or phrase and jump right to that reference to review it.

• Note-taking capabilities: If a reader desires, he or she can take margin notes or mark passages in a book, similar to using a highlighter pen to mark words or sections in a printed book. This functionality is dependent on the player (software or hardware) used to read the book, rather than on the book itself.

Bookshare.org books, since they originate as scanned books, can currently be navigated by word, paragraph, and page. The books can also be searched by word: for example, you could search for each occurrence of the word "revolution." Also, passages can be bookmarked within the software DAISY player provided with Bookshare.org members (Victor Reader Soft). The DAISY standard does not require support for all navigation features, and the detail with which DAISY books can be navigated depends on the support within the individual book for these navigation features.

"Flavors" of DAISY

In the same way that HTML (web pages) can look very different depending on who creates them -- some very simple, some very fancy -- DAISY books also come in different "flavors." Here is a simplified overview of the different types of DAISY books:

Bookshare.org DAISY books (text-only)
The DAISY format books from Bookshare.org contain only text, with no pre-recorded audio. Navigation through the book can be done by paragraph or page. The DAISY format can be easily read using the Victor Reader Soft, Bookshare.org Edition that is included with membership. These Bookshare.org books are not unlike word processor documents, with the built in navigation features described above.

Users who are blind can listen to the book with the Victor Reader Soft using a screen reader and users with low vision can use a screen magnifier to increase the text size. In addition, users can download the books easily into braille notetakes such as the Braille Note or Braille Lite. Users with learning disabilities can open the book in a specialized talking software program like WYNN or the Kurzweil 3000 that enables customization of the display, word highlighting while the book is read aloud and other support for specialized reading needs.

Audio-only books
Most accessible books available today are in cassette tape format, read by human narrators. Many DAISY books also contain only an audio recording, without the text of the book. For example, when RFB&D (Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic) launches its DAISY books this fall, most of their books will contain the audio recording of the book, created by human narrators, in the new digital format. The main benefits of this are the improved navigation features and the fact that most books fit on a single CD, rather than several audio tapes.

These audio-only books can be read with either a software DAISY book reader on a PC or a hardware DAISY player, easily using many of the navigation features mentioned above.

Text plus Audio books
The DAISY format supports both pre-recorded audio and the text of the book together, allowing users to simultaneously navigate through the text of a book and an audio recording of the book. RFB&D plans to release some of these books later this year. These books provide the benefits of both searchable text and recorded audio.

Resources

If you're interested in knowing more about the DAISY standard, please visit the DAISY Consortium's website at www.daisy.org.

For more technical information about DAISY format books, their Technology Overview page at www.daisy.org/about_us/dtbooks.asp is a good place to start.

The DAISY Consortium has recently moved to adopt a new NISO standard format, ANSI/NISO Z39.86, as the newest DAISY standard. Read more about this at www.loc.gov/nls/niso/.

Book Readers

There are both software DAISY readers for use on a computer, and hardware players that are smaller than the four-track cassette players that many people are accustomed to using. These players are easy to use, putting the navigation capabilities of this new standard right at the users' fingertips.

Software
The starred players from this list can read the Bookshare.org books. In partnership with VisuAide, Bookshare.org members receive a copy of the Bookshare.org Edition of the Victor Reader Soft as part of membership; this special edition player reads only Bookshare.org books.

• Victor Reader Soft* from VisuAide
• LP Player from Labyrinten, Dolphin Computer Access
• Book Wizard*, in in public beta, under development by American Printing House for the Blind
• KatiePlayer* under development by Kafka's Daytime

Hardware
The following hardware players will read books that contain pre-recorded audio. They will not read the Bookshare.org books that contain only text.

• Victor Reader from VisuAide
• Plextalk from Plextor

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