DAISY is a digital format for the representation of multimedia information such as text, audio and images. DAISY is an acronym for Digital Accessible Information SYstem. The open standard has been developed and is maintained by the DAISY Consortium. It has been adopted in many countries worldwide to provide accessible information to people with a print impairment, such as blind people, people with limited vision and people with dyslexia or other learning disabilities.
The standard is used by production centres and libraries for a wide variety of information, ranging from leisure reading, educational and professional literature to newspapers and magazines. Delivery formats include audio-only books, text–only books and hybrid books containing synchronised audio and text.
DAISY books can be played with DAISY hardware and software players. The standard offers rich markup options which enables users to navigate directly to specific sections, chapters, pages and sentences within a book. Other features are searching within text, resuming the last reading position and adding bookmarks.
In 2007 the DAISY standard was extended to include MathML. Previously, mathematical formulas had to be inserted as images accompanied by a textual or audio description. With the new extension formulas are accessible in itself, making it possible to explore them step by step. Recently, manufacturers of production tools and DAISY players have been incorporating the processing of MathML in DAISY books in their software.
Playback features of DAISY books including mathematical formulas will be shown. A demonstration will be given of the creation of a DAISY document including math up to playback by a MathML capable DAISY player. For more information on DAISY and mathematics see the webpages of the DAISY Consortium and those of the MathML Modular Extension Working Group: www.daisy.org and www.daisy.org/projects/mathml/mathml-in-daisy-spec.html
