Introduction

Some of you might be familiar with the DAISY format. DAISY stands for Digital Accessible Information System and is associated with providing a standard for publishing digital talking books. DAISY is particuarly beneficial for blind or partially sighted users. The clip below shows an example of Jamie Cutherbertson using a tradtional ‘CD’ based DAISY player.

However recent developments have increasingly made DAISY an invaluable resource for everyone, and more importantly, a resource which is free and easy to make. What am I getting at here? Well to be more precise, free digital talking books or e-books which can be made by using Microsoft Word 2007, a free plug-in and best practice in using Word, i.e., Word documents as they are meant to be with headings, page numbers, and alternative descriptions etc, in a nutshell, accessible Word documents.

So here’s how you go about it. First of all you’ll need either Microsoft Word 2003 but preferably 2007. Don’t worry if you don’t have either of these as it also works with the open source alternative to Microsoft Office, Open Office.

The Accessibility tab - part of the "Save As DAISY" add-in

Download the “Save As DAISY” add in for Word

First of all visit the DAISY website and download the free “Save As DAISY” add-in for Word. Or alternatively the “Save As DIASY” for Open Writer.
So, for the purposes of this tutorial I’ll use Word 2007 as the example. Once you’ve installed the add-in you should see a new Accessibility tab in Word’s ribbon.
The next stage is to create an accessible Word document using appropriate headings etc. There’s plenty of advice and examples that you can gleam from the excellent JISC TechDis Accessibility Essentials series. I’ve also got some Creating Accessible Word and PDF tutorials on this blog. Alternatively you can download an example here.

When your document is ready you need to save it in the normal way and then click or select the “Validation” button which is located in the “Accessibility’ tab. This will check to make sure your document reaches the DIASY standards for publication. If there are any errors the Validation tool will give you advice and recommendations of the required changes.

Validating your Word document

Save As DAISY

The next stage is to save your document so it can be translated into the DAISY format. To do this click the Office button and then select ‘Save As DAISY’ and finally “Full DAISY (from single Docx) – this option will provide audio narration and text. The final audio will depend on the quality of the synthetic voice you have on your computer.

Save As DAISY Pipeline

You should now see the progress bar, similar to the illustration below:

Running the Pipeline translator: progress bar

Read and listen to your e-Book

Once your document has been converted to DIASY digital talking book you need a reader to be able to hear and read your conversion. I would recommend either the open source AMIS or the Book Wizard Reader. The Book Wizard Reader has some nice features such as options for Braille display, audio, text etc. It also works as a portable application which means you can carry it about with you on a USB pendrive and use it whenever you want.

You can read or listen to your e-book

So now you have it – a portable, easy-to-use free e-book!