Increasing Media Access for People with Visual and Print Disabilities

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The project's broad, long-term objective is to dramatically improve access to printed documents, and their ease of use, for people with visual and other print disabilities. The approach is to develop tools for lay end-users to quickly and easily convert printed documents into a standard format from which Braille, speech, and/or large print can be generated. The target format, DAISY (Digital Accessible Information System), is an international multimedia standard that provides a means to synchronize text, audio, and graphics, enabling the end user to read, navigate, and annotate recorded media. DAISY provides a standard method of communicating that provides a bridge between the visual reader, audible reader, and Braille reader. Specific Phase I aims are to develop new publishing and playback software for DAISY 3, to develop software workflow processes to facilitate the rapid creation of DAISY documents by automatically recognizing text features such as document headings and page numbers for navigation, and to devise a practical distribution system using special files small enough for storage on CDs, and for transmission over phone lines from which the DAISY document can be created in a consumer playback unit. The research design is to divide the proposed Phase I work into two related tasks to be pursued in parallel: development of new DAISY writing software and development of new DAISY reading software. These new software applications will be achieved by building on IRTI's technologies used in its existing products, eClipseWriter(tm) and eClipse Reader(tm), and by using OCR (Optical Character Recognition), text-to-speech, and word processing technologies. The potential technological innovation will be a practical way for timely access to printed documents to be provided at the local level in auditory, Braille, and large print media. The anticipated result is for this new access to become widespread, enhancing the educational, vocational, and societal participation of people with print disabilities. The potential commercial applications are for products for publication, playback, and distribution of DAISY documents. Customers would include schools, colleges, government agencies, companies, organizations, and individuals who have a need for documents accessible by print disabled people. The relevance of this research to public health is that lack of timely and efficient access to printed documents is a major impact of visual impairment and other print disabilities.