[blindkid] Bookshare - NIMAC News!

Sat Jan 31 05:22:54 UTC 2009

Hello Steve, Mike and List:

     I am somewhat involved with a project known as Braille-In-DAISY which
seeks to create a suite of software to take DAISY books and translate them
to braille. This group has two parts; a core group and a larger group of
interested persons. The groups are drawn from an assortment of organizations
in the U.S., Canada, Europe and India. As you might imagine the issues faced
by this group are very complex. After lots of discussions, an effort is
underway to update the DAISY standard to include enough markup so materials
can be accurately translated. For those not familiar with the term, markup
is a way to identify parts of a book. For example, the title of the book
Little House in the Big Woods would be marked up as:
<title>Little House in the Big Woods</title>
The author's name has markup:
<author>Laura Ingals Wilder</author>

All the chapter headings, paragraphs etc. are marked up in a similar
fashion. Some of us were amazed to find out that modern school books have
become very visual with multiple fonts, words in color, boxes, sidebars etc.
In short, the complexity of the task was far greater than anyone had
thought. There is the added problem of symantics. That is in one book, words
in blue might be vocabulary words while in another book they could be in
read or yellow. The human transcriber who is reading the book knows what is
intended and can take appropriate action while the computer has no clue. As
for tactile diagrams, there is another group; SVG-in-DAISY. We are trying to 
figure out how to code diagrams. SVG stands for Scalable Vector Graphics. 
SVG is the concept that an image is made up of lines with defined lengths. 
The image can be made larger or smaller by changing the lengths of the lines 
keeping the relationship between all lines the same.

     All this is being done by volunteers and little funding.

     As for the NIMAS standard, It is my understanding that it was basically 
copied from DAISY and given a new name. One issue vendors will have is that 
the DAISY standard is evolving. I do not know if the NIMAS standard will 
keep pace. Hope all this makes sense.

Regards,

Robert Jaquiss, Chairman
SVG-in-DAISY

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Steve Jacobson" <steve.jacobson at visi.com>
To: "NFBnet Blind Kid Mailing List,(for parents of blind children)"
<blindkid at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Friday, January 30, 2009 8:46 PM
Subject: Re: [blindkid] Bookshare - NIMAC News!

There are elements of this effort that hold out some real promise.  One
concern that I and many others have is what sort
of quality control will there be on braille formatting.  As an adult, I can
live with poorly formatted materials, but I believe
that the formatting is more important when dealing with education of kids.
What I have learned from listening to people
in DSS offices is that there is a wide variation of quality in e-texts that
come from the publisher.  Even though there
should be more consistency here, poorly formatted tables and missing tactile
drawings put our kids at a great
disadvantage.  My fear is that getting texts that can be read in braille
quickly and cheaply may cause school districts to
not be all that concerned about such things as the tactile drawings that
were often created as part of the transcribing
process, and the tendency is going to blame the child for not figuring out a
poorly formatted table.

This isn't a reason not to move forward with this, but I would like to see
BookShare address this aspect of producing
these materials.  They may have an answer or at least a plan, but I have not
seen it addressed.  We should be happy
about this but also watchful.

Best regards,

Steve Jacobson
>>
>>----- Original Message ----- From: "Robert Jaquiss"
>><rjaquiss at earthlink.net>
>>To: "NFBnet Blind Kid Mailing List,(for parents of blind children)"
>><blindkid at nfbnet.org>
>>Sent: Thursday, January 29, 2009 9:59 AM
>>Subject: Re: [blindkid] Bookshare - NIMAC News!
>>
>>
>>Hello Eric and list:
>>
>>     I believe you are correct. The braille files could be read on a
>>BrailleNote or other device, or used to emboss a braille copy. It will be
>>interesting to see how well this actually works.
>>
>>Regards,
>>
>>Robert
>>
>>----- Original Message ----- From: "DrV" <icdx at earthlink.net>
>>To: "NFBnet Blind Kid Mailing List,(for parents of blind children)"
>><blindkid at nfbnet.org>
>>Sent: Wednesday, January 28, 2009 9:21 PM
>>Subject: Re: [blindkid] Bookshare - NIMAC News!
>>
>>
>>Does this mean that Middle & High School textbooks will be available for
>>downloading to a braille noting device?
>>Eric
>>(PS: Sorry, about the misfired messages.)
>>
>>
>>----- Original Message ----- From: "Bookshare.org (by way of David
>>Andrews<dandrews at visi.com>)"
>><Bookshare.org at mail.vresp.com>
>>To: <david.andrews at nfbnet.org>
>>Sent: Wednesday, January 28, 2009 16:36
>>Subject: [blindkid] Bookshare - NIMAC News!
>>
>>
>><http://cts.vresp.com/c/?Benetech/5d787704f2/0ae99e823c/f8a1a1dc74>
>>Bookshare: Books Without Barriers
>>
>>
>>Bookshare and NIMAC Announcement
>>
>>NIMAC books:
>>
>>To find NIMAC books, go to:
>><http://cts.vresp.com/c/?Benetech/5d787704f2/0ae99e823c/8cec87bc2a>http://nimac.us
>>
>>
>><mailto:nimacrequest at bookshare.org>Then email us
>>to request the book be added to Bookshare
>>
>>Dear David Andrews:
>>
>>Have you heard the good news? There is a simple
>>new NIMAC process that will enable Bookshare to
>>provide NIMAC books to your students in a week or
>>less at no cost, thanks to funding from the U.S.
>>Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs.
>>
>>You can now name Bookshare as one of your
>>Authorized Users (AU) at the NIMAC. You need to
>>sign an updated NIMAC coordination agreement,
>>which the NIMAC recently sent directly to all
>>NIMAC state coordinators, and then appoint
>>Bookshare as an AU. The new coordination
>>agreement is available online at the NIMAC's
>>website at:
>><http://cts.vresp.com/c/?Benetech/5d787704f2/0ae99e823c/07a24a3dec>http://www.nimac.us/2009
_NIMAC_COORD.DOC.
>>
>>
>>Then, when one of your students needs a book:
>>    * Any public school staff person (including
>>classroom teachers, special educators and
>>librarians) can send an email to
>><mailto:nimacrequest at bookshare.org>nimacrequest at bookshare.org
>>requesting the book after confirming that it's in
>>the NIMAC at:
>><http://cts.vresp.com/c/?Benetech/5d787704f2/0ae99e823c/64f515c348>http://nimac.us.
>>We just need to know the title, author, publisher and/or ISBN number.
>>    * We'll download the book, convert it into
>>accessible digital text formats (DAISY and BRF)
>>within a week and let the requestor know the book is in Bookshare.
>>    * The requestor logs into their Bookshare
>>account and downloads the book for a qualified
>>student with an IEP. Two different accessible
>>software packages that read the books are also
>>available free for download, as well as high quality synthetic speech.
>>
>>After you send the AU request to the NIMAC, we
>>will inform those educators in your jurisdiction
>>who are Bookshare Members about the process and
>>we'll include the information in communications
>>to appropriate personnel in all districts, regardless of Bookshare
>>membership.
>>
>>Together, let's get accessible textbooks flowing
>>smoothly from the NIMAC to students in a timely manner!
>>
>>
>>
>>Best regards,
>>
>>The Bookshare Team
>><http://cts.vresp.com/c/?Benetech/5d787704f2/0ae99e823c/1303295a4d>
>>Ideas That Work
>>
>>
>>© Copyright 2008, Beneficent Technology, Inc. (The Benetech Initiative)
>><http://cts.vresp.com/c/?Benetech/5d787704f2/0ae99e823c/b2c9e7bf48>Benetech
>>is a California nonprofit organization.
>>
>>Your responses will be kept strictly confidential
>>according to Bookshare.org's privacy policy. This
>>email was sent out by our market services
>>provider. Bookshare.org does not keep a copy of
>>your email address. For inquiries about upcoming
>>events such as webinars, please email us at
>><mailto:events at bookshare.org>events at bookshare.org.
>>If you have further questions or encounter any
>>problems, please email us at
>><mailto:info at bookshare.org>info at bookshare.org or call us at
>>1-800-833-2753.
>>
>>
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>>
>>
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