Gerald Schmidt

Learning and Teaching Solutions

The Open University

Embedding automated accessible outputsin course production

Single input, multiple outputs

Content creation

Automated production

What happens next?• Metadata is extracted and added as DAISY and Dublin Core fields

• Images are converted and resized

• Audio and video is copied across and embedded in the document

• All textual content is recorded using a synthetic voice

• DAISY Pipeline turns the source document into a full DAISY talking book

DAISY talking books

DAISY talking books• Unparalleled accessibility

• Synchronised speech and full text

• Structure matches the original document exactly

• Excellent hardware support

Additional choices• In order to do justice to the mix of photos, audio, video, interactivity and

textual content in our online teaching materials, it is necessary to offer

additional outputs

• Once an automated process is in place, adding further outputs is

inexpensive and quick

• As of this month, these are:

– Audio books

– ePub (e-ink)

– ePub (HTML5)

– Mobipocket

– Microsoft Word

Audio books

• Commuter car journey scenario

• Support for multi-lingual documents

• Interpreting tables

• MP3 files tagged with album, artist and track information

ePub ebook (e-ink)• Broad industry backing

– Sony Reader

– Barnes & Noble Nook

– Many other reader e-ink devices are set to go on sale this year

– Most can display ePub files

ePub ebook (HTML5)• The next generation of ePub enabled devices is likely to offer colour touch

screens, highly optimised JavaScript engines and key features of HTML5,

notably:

– Embedded audio

– Embedded video

– Canvas

Mobipocket ebook• This is essentially a variation on the ePub theme, only the supported

device is Amazon’s Kindle

• Text-to-speech support is excellent

Microsoft Word• The preferred accessible format for many students with disabilities

• Close integration with Jaws and Window-Eyes screen-reader software

• Editing and sharing Word documents is easier for most students than just

about any other format

General availability of DAISY and other formats• The university-wide roll-out begins in June

• Alternative outputs for our open educational resources under Creative

Commons are set to go live in September

• All tools used are open source software

– DAISY Pipeline (automatic DAISY production)

– ImageMagick (image conversion and sizing)

– LAME (MP3 encoding)

– Ghostscript (EPS handling)

• What we have added is a thin glue layer calling tools and libraries

• Available at http://daisydemon.sourceforge.net