The DAISY standard is about to undergo some significant changes in the next year and a half, with improvements aimed at making it easier to produce accessible material, as well as easier to read. The process is being run under the auspices of the NISO standards body, and is very open, so if you're interesting in following the efforts, you can find the ongoing notes, goals and progress of the different working groups on the Technical Advisory Committee's wiki or the meeting minutes page.
The changes to the standard fall in to a few broad categories:
- improvements to the XML format of the main content, making it easier for publishers and others to create material in a rich, accessible format, as well as making it easier to extend for new purposes (for example, authoring medical information records or scientific works.)
- changes that would make it easier to produce DAISY material that could play on consumer electronics like iPods or cell phones (for example, simplified navigation definition that would fit the abilities of MP3 players or phones)
- a single-file packaging definition that would make it easier to distribute material in a consistent way
In all of these areas, there is a conscious effort to make use of existing standards, both to leverage the thought and effort that went in to them, along with the software and devices already supporting those standards, but also to make it possible to move the DAISY standard along more quickly. The current DAISY standard already incorporates works from the Open eBook Forum (OEB Package Structure), the W3C (multi-media synchronization via SMIL and CSS are just two examples), and the Dublin Core initiative. The upcoming revision will bring in even more, most notably building on XHTML modularization.
What's exciting for Bookshare is that we are fortunate to have two of our engineers involved in helping to bring these changes about. Reuben Firmin is a member of the Technical Advisory Committee and lead of one of the standard revision research groups, and John Brugge is a non-voting member of the Technical Advisory Committee and participating in research work. The Advisory Committee and working groups are a fantastic group of people from around the world who are committed to making peoples' reading experience as rich and rewarding as it can be. Being involved in the evolution of the standard means that we will be able to bring these changes in to Bookshare more quickly, and can bring the concerns and suggestions of Bookshare users to the standards discussion.
There is plenty of work to do, and being an extra-curricular activity for all of the people involved, it is hard to make it happen as quickly as everyone would like. There should be a draft standard, though, within about six months, and a completed revision by 2010. Trust us, though, it will be worth the wait.
