You might have caught a story in the press today about a translator project that Microsoft and the Digital Accessible Information SYstem (DAISY) Consortium are establishing on SourceForge that will provide both some new functionality in Microsoft Office along with an offline capability to convert Open XML files into DAISY format for use with a range of accessible technologies.
Here is a link to one of the stories from this morning from eWeek, the quote below is from Reed Shaffner, the Program Manager in the Office group who has been working on this from the Microsoft side;
The project is being hosted on SourceForge, with the first beta code expected by early next year and release by March 2008, Shaffner said, noting that the plug-in will work with all Word documents created with Office XP, Office 2003 and the current Office 2007.
“Essentially what will happen is that the plug-in will convert an Open XML file to an intermediate Daisy XML file in the Talk Book format. Customers can then use one of many tools, which are already available, to create a bunch of different accessible outputs, be it Braille or a really rich audio file that allows them to navigate by heading or page number and navigate tables with much more detail than they would typically be able to,” he said.
George Kerscher, secretary general of the DAISY Consortium, explains the DAISY translator plug-in project this way:
“Microsoft’s announcement is monumental in greatly facilitating the availability of text in DAISY books. It provides a clear, production path for organizations and universities who will be able to use the Microsoft plug-in to move into DAISY XML. Putting tools in the hands of people who create content is a giant step toward creating equal access to information … It’s going to move DAISY … from the niche of the libraries for the blind community into the mainstream.”
This project provides both a capability to convert Open XML based documents to the intermediate DAISY format, but will also deliver an open source based reference implementation that any other developer can use when building their own similar translators.
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