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Accessible Digital Media

Digital media formats designed specifically for use with assistive technologies (AT) enable access to information for people who have a print disability that prevents them from seeing the words or images on a page, holding a book, or even turning its pages.

Digital Talking Books

At its most basic level, a Digital Talking Book (DTB) is an audio representation of a print publication which is designed to further enable individuals with print disabilities.

What is a DTB?

DTBs consist of a series of XML-based files, containing the full text, playable in synchronized speech as well as in electronic form. These files are coordinated to provide a feature-rich experience for readers with a wide range of print disabilities. A DTB is intended to provide enhanced access to documents above and beyond the standard audio book.

How is a DTB different from an audio book?

DTBs have all the benefits of regular audio books, but they are superior when it comes to navigating the content and displaying synchronized text. Whereas analog audio books must be manually manipulated to find specific sections, DTBs provide enhanced multimedia access to the content for people who are blind or otherwise visually-impaired, giving them ready access to particular sections of the book.

A DTB synchronizes the text and audio portions of the book, and has the following features:

  • Navigation
  • Skippability
  • Escapeability
  • Generates electronic Braille
  • Visual reinforcement for low-vision

What are the different types of DTBs?

There are three types of DTBs:

  •  Audio and full text: The most complete form of a DTB, containing the entire text of a document as recorded audio and as electronic text.
  • Audio with navigation: This form of DTB is effectively an enhanced audio book, with the entire document as recorded audio, plus the additional navigation features of DTBs. This format is most commonly created by Learning Ally.
  • Text only: Text only DTBs provide all of the content of a DTB, including navigation and display options, but lack any pre-recorded audio. These DTBs are often rendered using TTS for full audio playback.

All three types can be used with players having text-to-speech (TTS), such as ReadHear™. Non-TTS players can only play the first two types, however, as they lack the ability to synthetically generate speech.

DAISY

Digital Accessible Information System (DAISY) is an electronic format developed by the DAISY Consortium. DAISY Digital Talking Books can be produced in several ways, including:

  • text-only
  • audio and text
  • full audio

Who is DAISY?

The DAISY Consortium was formed by talking book libraries to lead the worldwide transition from analog to Digital Talking Books. The DAISY Standard allows for full flexibility in the mix of text and audio, ranging from audio-only, to full text and audio, to text-only.

The DTB standard, ANSI/NISO Z39.86-2005 (better known as DAISY 3), was authored and is maintained by the DAISY Consortium.

NIMAS

The National Instructional Material Accessibility Standard (NIMAS), a subset of DAISY, is a national standard that makes it easier for students with print disabilities to access learning materials.

What is NIMAS?

NIMAS is a significant advancement in providing students with visual disabilities accessible textbook content. By specifying a national standard by which publishers are required to provide textbook files, the potential exists to produce digital and Braille content in a more cost effective and expeditious manner.

Who does NIMAS effect?

NIMAS files are intended for students in elementary and secondary schools who have a print disability that prevents them from seeing the words or images on a page, holding a book, or even turning its pages. The students who experience these challenges may require different tools and support that help them gain the ability to manipulate and comprehend content of their assigned text. The universal challenge that all these students have is that the content has only been available in standard print form, which has forced them to find alternative ways to access the information. Fortunately, with the birth of NIMAS, students now have a universal file format that can either be accessed by reading software or by being sent to a conversion company to render the file into Braille, large print, or a DAISY digital talking book.

Legislation involving NIMAS

The NIMAS provision was included in the revised Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) 2004. In this legislation a standard NIMAS file format was created for the production of textbooks for students who are blind and print-disabled. The result is a common file that will be provided from a publisher to a repository of NIMAS titles stored at the National Instructional Materials Accessibility Center (NIMAC). NIMAC will then make the files available to both State and Local Education Agencies, who will then have them converted into the desired accessible formats (Braille, large print, and digital talking books). Utilizing these NIMAS files should expedite the production of print instructional materials for students who qualify for materials in specialized formats, as set forth under the Chafee Amendment to the Copyright Act. Although the NIMAS file is not considered “student ready,” having the publisher provide the file at the same time the book is published will mean lower costs to convert it into an accessible format, while making it available at the beginning of the school term with higher quality than students receive currently.

By receiving study materials in NIMAS format, students can use tools that help access the content better, allowing them to meet the Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) for No Child Left Behind, an act passed in 2001 targeted at closing the achievement gap between mainstream students and their disadvantaged and minority peers.

What is NIMAS based on?

The NIMAS specification is an XML source file derived as a subset of the ANSI/NISO Z39.86-2005 standard that is also used as the standard for DAISY 3.0 digital talking books. The National File Format Technical Panel, comprised of forty educators, disability advocates, publishers, and technology specialists, developed the standard from 2002 through 2004.

What is NIMAS best for?

NIMAS files are most effectively used for literary-based textbooks. There is still going to be a void that will need to be filled for math and science material in an accessible format. Currently, secondary school students are in large part unable to receive accessible instructional materials in mathematics and science due to its varying levels of complexity.

Other Formats (XML, HTML, RTF, PDF)

XML

Extensible Markup Language (XML) is an actively developed, open standard, human and machine-readable markup language (XML’s specifications can be accessed via the World Wide Web Consortium, “XML 1.0 Specification”). Designed for simplicity and flexibility, XML functions as a ‘common’ markup language of sorts, allowing for the preservation, sharing, and transformation of data independent of (and therefore between) existing software or hardware conditions—that is, it is extensible. Through schemas that help define the customizable languages of XML across communities and programming APIs (application programming interfaces) that aid in exposing and processing XML formatted data across environments, XML has become a widely adopted language for developing new document formats (RSS, SVG, XHTML, etc.), storage systems, development frameworks. XML has been referred to as “the first step towards the next generation Web” (XML 1.0 Recommendation, February 1998) and has become the base language of many of our most commonly used applications and tools (Microsoft Office for example).

XML standards have rapidly been adopted into the accessibility industry, with Digital Talking Books and NIMAS files as the front runners of that adoption. Additionally, the DAISY Consortium has recently adopted a modular extension for the inclusion of MathML in Digital Talking Books. MathML is an XML specification designed for the accurate presentation of complex mathematics and science structures. Traditionally, all complex mathematics content would need to be rendered as an image, preventing access to individuals with print disabilities. With the adoption of this modular extension, this is no more! Members of SWH worked extensively with the DAISY Consortium in the development of this modular extension and SWH has already authored several MathML-embedded titles.

Advocating the push for the Digital Talking Book and NIMAS specifications and developing software and protocols for converting files in and out of XML document formats, SWH has become an industry leader in XML accessibility conversion. Our experts can guide you through the conversion process, as well as design new specifications to suit your needs, all with the speed and accuracy our customers have come to expect.

HTML/XHTML

HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) is by far one of the most widely used document formats. HTML is similar to XML in many ways (the related XHTML format is an XML extension of HTML, though with stricter validation requirements than HTML4 or the current HTML5 standards), particularly in that it provides an elemental syntax for structuring data of a digital document. Where XML provides an extensible framework for delivering and handling data across software and hardware specifications, HTML is the standard document markup language used for semantically structuring (via a delimited tagging protocol: headings, paragraphs, images, links, etc.) documents for the web and web-based applications. HTML is most often managed in conjunction with CSS (Cascading Style Sheets, introduced in HTML4) and browser-based and server-side scripting languages (e.g., JavaScript, PHP). HTML5 introduced native JavaScript and vector graphics support, further enhancing HTML-based content management and experience. Though historically the HTML tagging schema included non-semantic, presentational markup (e.g., < center >< i >< i >< b >, < u >, etc.), this approach has been deprecated in HTML5 and XHTML due to, in large part, accessibility concerns.

HTML ACCESSIBILITY

In recent years, the web accessibility community has published extensive guidelines and criteria for ensuring HTML (and CSS, JavaScript) based content can be made accessible. Advocating accessibility first in designing and developing the web, the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) released its Web Content Accessibility Guidelines WCAG 1.0 in 1999. Since then, WCAG has become an internationally recognized standard for web accessibility (also satisfying Section 508 guidelines). It focuses on four core principles of accessibility: Perceivability of information and components; Operability of components and navigation; Understandability of information and components; and Robustness of content and its “compatibility with current and future users agents.” W3C released WCAG 2.0 in 2008 and WCAG 2.1 in 2018.

RTF

Rich Text Files (RTF) are a special format that is most commonly used in conjunction with Microsoft Word. The RTF specification allows for visual styling, embedded images, and offers many of the common output features of a word processor, like Microsoft Word.

RTF is relied upon greatly for Braille translation. Often publishers provide RTF files of their books to Alternative Media Centers specifically to produce Braille.

PDF

Adobe’s Portable Document Format (PDF) is a cross-platform format that emphasizes portability. Many businesses and government agencies offer reports, forms, and brochures as PDF files only. Consequently, it is important that these files can be accessed by everyone. Accessible PDFs should include the following:

  • Alternative text descriptions
  • Searchable text
  • Proper document structure and content tagging
  • Fillable forms
  • Correct reading order
  • Navigational aids