Learning Disabilities are Defined as:
(10) Specific learning disability -(i) General. Specific learning disability means a disorder in one or more of the basic psychological processes involved in understanding or in using language, spoken or written, that may manifest itself in the imperfect ability to listen, think, speak, read, write, spell, or to do mathematical calculations, including conditions such as perceptual disabilities, brain injury, minimal brain dysfunction, dyslexia, and developmental aphasia.
(ii) Disorders not included: Specific learning disability does not include learning problems that are primarily the result of visual, hearing, or motor disabilities, of mental retardation, of emotional disturbance, or of environmental, cultural, or economic disadvantage.
What are Digital Accessible Information System (DAISY) books?
DAISY Digital Talking Books (DTB) standards are developed, maintained and promoted by are international DAISY Consortium (Outside source).
A DAISY Book can be explained as a set of digital files that includes:
- One or more digital audio files containing a human narration of part or all of the source text
- A marked-up file containing some or all of the text (strictly speaking, this marked-up text file is optional)
- A synchronization file to relate markings in the text file with time points in the audio file
- A navigation control file which enables the user to move smoothly between files while synchronization between text and audio is maintained
The DAISY Standard allows the producing agency full flexibility regarding the mix of text and audio ranging from audio-only, to full text and audio, to text-only.
The CSMT DAISY DTB are either in DAISY 2.02 (Outside Source) full text and full audio or ANSI/NISO Z39.86-2005 commonly referred as DAISY 3 (Outside Source) text with graphics only books.
CSMT DAISY 2.02 DTB CD’s and DVD’s include the following file types:
- DAISY Consortium/NISO Standard Book(s) (DAISY)
- MPEG Layer 3 (MP3) Audio File(s)
- Rich Text Files (RTF)
CSMT downloadable DAISY 3 DTB full text with images only books includes following file types:
- DAISY 3.0 XML File(s)
- DAISY 3.0 OPF File(s)
- DAISY SMIL file(s)
- Images and stylesheets
DTBs give users the ability to:
- Play the book on variety of hardware and software players depending on DAISY file type (e.g. CD Players, Mobile Phones, Computers, flash memory players such as iPod, Notepads such s iPad,etc.)
- Increase the font size
- Vary the speed of the reading
- Change the background color to meet specific needs depending on the DAISY player
- Highlight sentences
- Read along with a speech synthetic voice
- Bookmark to the word, page, chapter or unit
- Jump to any page, chapter or section of the book
CSMT DAISY 2.02 and DAISY 3.0 books can be opened and played in many open source or commercial DAISY software players (Outside Source), Hardware players (Outsides Source) or Mobile Applications (Outside Source) depending on the book and the player specifications. Adaptive Multimedia Information System (AMIS) (Outside Source) is one of the DAISY playerback software and is developed by DAISY Consortium.
Some of the AMIS features include:
- Support full-text/full audio, audio only, and text-only DAISY 2.02 and DAISY 3 books
- Self-Voicing player,meaning no specialized screen-reading software is needed in order to be used by visually impaired people
- Books are played with synchronized phrase-level highlighting.
- Supports different views/style of the page
- Adjustable text sizes, contrast and background colors
- Adjustable audio speed
- Supports multiple languages
- Supports bookmarking
- Open the book from CD-ROM, URL or from specific location in your computer.
- Search text of a DAISY books
- Allows the user to skip items such as footnotes, pages, producer Notes and sidebars
- Supports Navigation to previous/next section/page or specific page in the book
Resources
DAISY Consortium (Outside Source)
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
