New Firefox Add-On Daisy Player!

From a listserv I am on:

We are very happy to announce the 1.0 version of DDReader (for Windows). It is a software developed by Dorina Nowill Foundation for the Blind from Brazil. It is available in three languages: Portuguese, Spanish and English and is free to use and share. It is the first free Portuguese DAISY 3.0 reader!

DDR is a Firefox add-on, so you must have Firefox to install it. You can download DDReader from:

English Version

Spanish

Portugeuse

Additional Information on the Google v. Publisher Resolution

The Google v. Publisher lawsuits have been going on for quite some time now. I have written about this previously and one of the better posts is titled E-Book versus E-Text Update.
At present, the digital books provided by Google are both incomplete and inaccessible to screen readers and text to speech programs. They are not PDF images per se but on-line formats that can merely be viewed visually. Prior to this resolution, Google was not able to provide books in their entirety. The backbone reason for their work was to provide public access to portions of books on-line and if someone wanted the full book they could order it through Amazon.com or a Google partner. The idea was that the public could leaf through materials digitally and decide if they wanted to make a purchase.

It remains to be seen what this resolution will mean for students with print impairments but I have to doubt that Google will encroach upon the textbook market as their focus has been on the out-of-print market. Keep in mind that even though Google states that its "mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful" - their definition of "accessible and useful" does not necessarily jive with what our profession deems as "accessible and useful".

Several in our filed have tried to convert items available through Google to more accessible formats but to no avail. Will this change in the future? Who knows at this point. As fast as technology moves these days Google could announce its own web based text to speech screen reader tomorrow and I would not be surprised.
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I could swear this had been resolved already !?!?

From the On-Line Edition of the Chronicle of Higher Education (10-28-2008):

Google, Publishers, and Authors Settle Huge Lawsuit Over Book-Scanning Project

Google, the Authors Guild, and the Association of American Publishers announced today that they had settled their longstanding legal battle over Google’s mass scanning of books. Under the terms of the deal, Google will pay $125-million to establish a Book Rights Registry, to compensate authors and publishers whose copyrighted books have already been scanned, and to cover legal costs.

The settlement, which still needs court approval to go into effect, would resolve a class-action lawsuit brought in 2005 by the Authors Guild as well as a separate lawsuit filed on behalf of the publishers’ association. Publishers and authors argued that Google’s scanning of books for its Google Book Search program was a flagrant violation of copyright law's provisions governing fair use.

“We had a major disagreement with Google about copyright law,” Paul Aiken, the guild’s executive director, said during a joint teleconference that Google and the publishers held with reporters today. “We still do, and probably always will.” But he said that the parties had been “able to set those issues aside” for what “may be the biggest book deal in U.S. publishing history.”

The deal goes far beyond money. Richard Sarnoff, chairman of the publishers’ association, described it to reporters as “breathtaking in scope, groundbreaking for publishers and authors, and trailblazing for intellectual property in general.”

Unlocking Millions of Texts

If approved by a judge, the accord would allow users of Google Book Search in the United States to see the full texts of books they can read only in snippets now. The deal would also have the potential to put millions more out-of-print or hard-to-find titles within the reach of readers and researchers. Institutions would be able to buy subscriptions so that their students and faculty members could have full access to complete texts. All public libraries in the United States would be given free portals for their patrons. (The settlement does not apply to the use of Google Book Search outside the United States.)

Users without library or institutional access would pay a fee to preview the full text of a book. Google and the copyright holders—the publishers and authors—would share the proceeds from subscriptions and individual use. Authors and publishers could opt out of the program.

The deal will “unlock millions of these texts for users,” said David Drummond, chief legal officer of Google, during the teleconference. Google, he said, considered the deal a great leap forward as well. “Search simply isn’t complete without this content,” he said.

Early reaction from academe has been enthusiastic. Stanford University, the University of California, and the University of Michigan issued a joint statement of support for the agreement, praising its “outstanding public benefits.” The libraries of the three universities have been among a number working with the plaintiffs and Google “to shape this agreement for the public good,” said Michael A. Keller, Stanford’s university librarian and director of the Stanford University Press.

Paul N. Courant, university librarian at the University of Michigan, said in the statement that “the opportunity to search and preview millions of books online” was especially valuable. “This is a service that libraries, because of copyright restrictions, could not offer on their own and goes well beyond what would have been possible, even if Google had prevailed in defending the lawsuit,” Mr. Courant said.

Google’s library partners also stand to benefit because Google will provide them with digitized copies of scanned materials, which will help in their long-term preservation efforts.

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Here is the Wired take on this story
http://blog.wired.com/business/2008/10/google-authors.html

And, of course, the information direct from Google:
http://books.google.com/googlebooks/agreement/

Update on Open Office 3.0 Release

Open Office is available for the Macintosh platform. Unfortunately it runs only on Intel -based Macs. For those of you with slightly older Macs with PowerPC processors, download and run the older 2.x edition that requires X11.

Evelyn Wood Would be Proud

Interesting posting in the Chronicle of Higher Education Wired-Campus Blog about students watching video lectures in fast forward.

Some professors report that when their students are reviewing class materials, the students speed up online recordings of lectures and zip through hour-long presentations in as little as 30 minutes. Sure, their professors sound like chipmunks. But the students say they can absorb the information faster than the professors deliver it.

As per usual with this blog, the comments make even better reading than the initial posting with discussion back and forth regarding how sensible it is to belive that students really can improve their comprehension level by viewing or listening to lectures and other course materials at high playback speed. Several folks from the disability services realm (especially from those experienced in working with the Blind and visually impaired) report the high speed at which users of JAWS and other screenreaders rev up their playback.

Several supporting articles and papers are linked from the comments section, including and article from the New York Times, a paper (in PDF format) presented to an institutional Instructional Design Center, and a link to a blog with similar information. As can be expected, there are numerous detractors posting comments and it should be recognized that 'speed listening' is not going to be equally effective for everyone, but it is at least worth a try.

I have some personal experience with speed listening in that my friend and business partner swears by it and has gotten me trying it as well. from the time he discovered DAISY Talking Books he starts the semester by listening to all of his books at high speed once thru. In his words this provides an overview of the material and sets and outline of sorts in his mind. Later on, when he reads for specific assignyemts, he slows the rate down and listens more intently. What he has found personally is that his comprehension of the reading material skyrockets. This is especially true when he is able to view the text on screen as well as listen audibly.
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New Items of Open Source Interest

Several new versions of old friends have appeared in the last few days - must be something about Columbus Day that brings out the update fever.

First up is Open Office 3.0. Kiss your Microsoft Office Suite good-bye - this is especially true if you have been saddled with Office 2007 and long for Office 2003 or XP. In fact, the excitement over this update was so great that the Oo Servers crashed from the demand. I have used Open Office for E-Text production for a couple of years now as it provides a much cleaner output than Word (as have others). But now there are more reasons to use it as a replacement for Microsoft.

Next is update to the Firefox Web Browser with the release of Firefox 3. Already known for its accessibility, the latest version of Firefox has a Full Zoom feature that may not have been designed specifically for low-vision access but provides very clear and sharp up-close rendering of webpages. Firefox is continuing its committment to accessibility by improving its ability to handle screenreaders and minimizing key strokes. Learn everything you would ever want to know about FireFox accessibility at AccessFireFox website.

From the 'now you see it ...' department comes the release of the AMIS 3.0 DAISY Reader. Available for one day, it was dicovered to have a couple of bugs and was quickly pulled by the development team (one of whom happens to be my friend and business partner). According to him the bugs are minor fixes and the program should be available again soon. What we did get to experience was impressive as the interface is cleaner than before, the navigation window provides better access to headers and page numbers, and (best of all) AMIS 3.0 can now carries voices. This is a major improvement because building Text-Only DAISY files that can use the voices on an end-users computer is much easier than Text-To-Speech encoding them.

Ifyou truly want to keep up with what is new and good in Open Source Assistive Technology, bookmark the OATSoft Website which contains a very nice listing of Accessibility Activities as well as an alphabetical repository of many many projects.
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Ron Stewart for President 2008

It's a good thing ATHEN holds its annual meeting after the national elections -- because I believe current ATHEN President Ron Stewart has a real shot at the White House.!
Don't believe me ... check out this news feature: 
http://www.tsgnet.com/pres.php?id=46832&altf=Spo&altl=Tufxbsu

My apologies to our visually impaired readers, but this was too good to pass up.

A Couple of New Blogs and a recent one

Two new blogs have come to my attention - one of them through another blog I frequent and the other through a listserv posting. The first is the Quality Indicators for Assistive Technology (QIAT) list out of the University of Kentucky. The website housing the list contains good information for assistive technology teams when considering and reviewing policies and procedures. This is the proper address to join the QIAT listserv.
The second blog belongs to a friend and fellow ATHEN member Terrill Thompson and is simply titled Terrill Thompson. Terrill is a pretty well known and respected access technologist who represents ATHEN at Educause conferences and the like. One of his posts is from the HigherEdWeb conference.
I also want to throw a shout-out for the blog run by James Baily titled Managing Assistive Technology in Higher Education.
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The ATOMS Project

The Assistive Technology Outcomes Measurement System (ATOMS) Project was launched by a five year assistive technology (AT) outcomes and impacts project funded in part by the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research (NIDRR) under the Disability and Rehabilitation Research Projects (DRRP) program.

The Green and Mean and Lighter and Better Perkins Brailler

New and imprtoved with less weight, less noise, and less force - it will be with you wherever you go.

The Boston Globe has a story this morning on the new and improved Perkins Brailler. Anyone who has used one of these stalwarts of access knows they are not the most user friendly for our 21st century ultra portable ideal of communication. While others have been mucking about with trying to add text to speech to cell phones, or make DAISY players that are unplugged on the go, or even tactile electronic paper, the engineers over at Perkins have been quietly redesigning and improving the most solid, most reliable, and most fundamental access tool of them all.

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