Making information accessible for people
with disabilities
Cost-effective solutions
Chair: Stephen King, President DAISY Consortium
Board member Accessible Book Consortium
Rapporteur: Martin Mwongela Kavua,
Lecturer, Department of Hearing Impairment and Communication Difficulties (HICD),
Kenya Institute of Special Education (KISE), Kenya
Creating the Best Way to Read and Publish
Making information accessible for people with disabilities
Our 7 Presentations from 8 Panellists
• 1. Mr Martin Mwongela Kavua, Lecturer, Department of Hearing
Impairment and Communication Difficulties (HICD), Kenya
Institute of Special Education (KISE), Kenya
• 2. Mr Dipendra Manocha, Mr Dipendra Manocha, Coordinator
Developing countries – DAISY Consortium, President DAISY Forum
of India & Member Executive Committee – World blind union
• 3. Ms Eve Andersson, Lead Accessibility Engineering, Google, USA
• 4. Mr James Teh, Executive Director and Mr Gary Baxter, General
Manager, NV Access Limited, Australia
• 5. Mr Richard Orme, International Council for the Education of
Visually Impaired People, ICEVI Technology Initiative Lead, UK
• 6. Mr Ugo Falace, CEO, Centro Leonardo Education Srl, Italy
• 7. Prof. Balakrishnan from the Assestech Lab of IIT Delhi.
Creating the Best Way to Read and Publish
Making information accessible for people with disabilities
What I am going to cover?
• Who are the DAISY consortium & our partners?
• What is the challenge?
• The 3 key issues for making information accessible
• Kit
• Confidence
• Content
• Introduce our Speakers on some cost effective solutions
& Try and keep them to 8-9 minutes time
• Chair questions & discussion
Creating the Best Way to Read and Publish
Who are our Session organisers?
• DAISY Consortium www.DAISY.org
• Developing the best way to read & Publish
• World Blind Union www.worldblindunion.org
• The Voice of 285 Million Blind & Partially sighted People
• Accessible Book Consortium
www.accessiblebooksconsortium.org
• Bringing Books to the Visually Impaired
• ICEVI (International Council for Education of people
with Visual Impairment) www.icevi.org
• Equal access to appropriate education for all children and
youth with visual impairment
Creating the Best Way to Read and Publish
Our Principal Partner is the World Organisation of Blind People
Creating the Best Way to Read and Publish
Creating the Best Way to Read and Publish
Creating the Best Way to Read and Publish
Partners in inclusive and special education
Delivering Millennium Development education goals & post 2015 agenda
Creating the Best Way to Read and Publish
Partners Implementing the UNCRPD
and Post 2015 development agenda
• Partners focused on enabling access to information and
learning promised in the UN Convention on the Rights of
Persons with Disabilities & Development agenda
• WBU focuses on legal frameworks and advocacy
• ICEVI focuses on Enabling inclusion in education and works
with DAISY on access to Curriculum
• ABC Brings together Industry, Government & Consumers
with International & development Community
• DAISY Consortium enables Technology companies
publishers and Service providers to co-operate
Creating the Best Way to Read and Publish
Making information accessible for people with disabilities
What is the Challenge?
Creating the Best Way to Read and Publish
Since Caxton people with print
disability denied access
Creating the Best Way to Read and Publish
Print disabled readers & learners
denied access to curriculum
Creating the Best Way to Read and Publish
Until now Libraries for the Blind have
helped people in Developed World
Reading with eyes ears & fingers
Creating the Best Way to Read and Publish
But libraries can’t keep up
• Explosion of publishing worldwide
• Only 5% of books available in accessible formats in
best performing countries: Less than 1% in many
• Poor service: Making Giant print, Braille, Talking
Books, is slow & expensive and materials not shared
• Curriculum materials difficult
• People in Developing world lack any services & can’t
access International content
Creating the Best Way to Read and Publish
People with disabilities left behind
• In Developed world, many succeeding, but many
excluded due to barriers to access to information
• Disabled people often left behind in Millennium
Development goal advances
• Post 2015 Agenda will have focus on ensuring
people with disabilities included & not left behind
• Enabling access to information is going to be key to
achieving post 2015 targets
• Partners here to help you; Today, 2015 & beyond
Creating the Best Way to Read and Publish
So what is print disability?
(Numbers are uncertain)
• Blind & partially sighted people ~285 Million globally
• Includes many older people with age related conditions
• 1 in 7 people over 60 struggle to read ordinary print
www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs282/en/
• Dyslexic conditions
• 1 in 5 US students have a language based learning
condition & dyslexia is the most common.
• UK estimates 4% of population had dyslexic conditions
and up to 15% prone.
• 20-30%+ of Prison population found to have Dyslexia
• Stroke, Aphasia and other physical problems
Creating the Best Way to Read and Publish
Making information accessible for people with disabilities
Who are the
DAISY Consortium
(& our Partners)?
Creating the Best Way to Read and Publish
DAISY is a Global not for profit consortium
Not for profit members, For profit Friends
Originally founded by Libraries for the Blind
Creating the Best Way to Read and Publish
DAISY Consortium Vision
• People have equal access to information
and knowledge, regardless of disabilities
Our Mission
• Working to create the best way to read and
publish,
for everybody, in the 21st century
By delivering global partnerships ... that build a more effective
solution for everyone.
Committed to a common mission & vision.
Coordinating resources to deliver global
change
Creating the Best Way to Read and Publish
Our goal is confident people
reading what they want, when they want with
eyes, ears or fingers
Wherever they are in the world
Creating the Best Way to Read and Publish
DAISY member support our vision of better
inclusion of people with print disabilities
Creating the Best Way to Read and Publish
Enabling Partnerships to
Deliver Access to Information
Creating the Best Way to Read and Publish
What’s DAISY Approach to Inclusion?
• Transform Global publishing Industry to enable
Inclusive Publishing: e-Books that anyone can read
with eyes, ears or fingers
• Enable Technology companies to build in assistive
Technology & Special Tech Companies to improve
• Enable specialist enhanced access providers to
improve and share skills, technology & content
• Ensure People get the Skills to benefit worldwide
Creating the Best Way to Read and Publish
Making information accessible for people with disabilities
Our approach In Short
• To access information people need 3 things:
• Kit (Assistive & Adaptive personal Technology: Phone, Tablet etc)
• Mainstream and/or specialist interface that enables them to
access using their preferred mix of eyes, ears & fingers
• Confidence (To use it)
• Skills to use a different interface (and support of parents,
employers, supporters and IT services)
• Content (That works with assistive Technologies)
• Well designed e-text which re-flows to different screens, works
with screen readers and has descriptions for visual content.
• Without all 3 pieces projects and Inclusion will fail
Creating the Best Way to Read and Publish
Making information accessible for people with disabilities
Lets hear from our Speakers
• 1. Mr Martin Mwongela Kavua, Lecturer, Department of Hearing
Impairment and Communication Difficulties (HICD), Kenya
Institute of Special Education (KISE), Kenya
• 2. Mr Dipendra Manocha, Mr Dipendra Manocha, Coordinator
Developing countries – DAISY Consortium, President DAISY Forum
of India & Member Executive Committee – World blind union
• 3. Ms Eve Andersson, Lead Accessibility Engineering, Google, USA
• 4. Mr James Teh, Executive Director and Mr Gary Baxter, General
Manager, NV Access Limited, Australia
• 5. Mr Richard Orme, International Council for the Education of
Visually Impaired People, ICEVI Technology Initiative Lead, UK
• 6. Mr Ugo Falace, CEO, Centro Leonardo Education Srl, Italy
• 7. Prof. Balakrishnan from the Assestech Lab of IIT Delhi.
Creating the Best Way to Read and Publish
Making information accessible for people with disabilities
Our Speakers will talk about some practical cost effective
solutions that provide elements of kit, confidence & content
• 1.Dipendra Manocha Learning from development projects that bring
together Kit, Confidence and Content.
• 2.Eve Andersson Inclusive design and accessibility features available on
the Google platforms & opportunities to participate
• 3.James Teh,and Gary Baxter The crucial role of screen readers & NVDA,
a widely used free open Source screen reader for Microsoft Windows
• 4. Martin Mwongela Kavua Projects in inclusive and special Education
• 5. Richard Orme, “Visionary Learning through Technology” a network of
projects to enable inclusion in education
• 6. Ugo Falace A new model of Inclusive publishing in Education
• 7. Prof. Balakrishnan Developing low cost assistive technologies to
enable access
Creating the Best Way to Read and Publish
Making information accessible for people with disabilities
Cost-effective solutions
THANK YOU!
Chair: Stephen King, President DAISY Consortium
Board member Accessible Book Consortium
President@DAISY.org
S.P.King@outlook.com
Creating the Best Way to Read and Publish