Multimedia Browser for Internet Online Daisy Books

Multimedia Browser for Internet Online Daisy Books Piotr Brzoza1 and Dominik Spinczyk2 1 Silesian

University of Technology, Computer Science Department, Akademicka 16 44-100 Gliwice, Poland [email protected] http://www.key.org.pl 2 Silesian University of Technology, Biomedical Department, Akademicka 16 44-100 Gliwice, Poland [email protected]

Abstract. Visually impaired people have limited access to printed media: books, magazines, newspapers etc. Only one to five percentage of printed books and magazines are published in the form accessible for this group of readers. Nowadays printed materials are prepared on computers in digital form. These documents can be accessible for all readers. Paper describes a computer system enabling interactive online presentation of multimedia Daisy books over the Internet. The system cooperates with the Internet multimedia library computer management system. The main goal of both projects and their execution, is easy and effective access to information for visually impaired people. We focus on new feature of our DaisyReader which allows interactive voice reading of math formulas.

1 Introduction Visually impaired people have limited access to printed media: books, magazines, newspapers. Only a small percentage of printed books and magazines are published in Braille or are recorded on cassettes or CDs. The cost associated with those publications is very high. It limits and delays the amount of available publications. Computers equipped with screen magnifier, screen reader or talking multimedia browser enable blind users unlimited access to information. Internet library portals, friendly to visually impaired readers allow for easy and effective access to catalogues of public and academic libraries. The next step in accessibility of printed materials is their structuring and change to digital form. The main goal of current projects is to perform such structuring, which will enable presentation of the book’s content in multimedia form adapted to the needs of differently handicapped reader groups.

2 State of Art 2.1 Accessibility of Library Web Services Accessibility and usability tests were conducted to assess to public and academic library portals in Poland. Library web pages were evaluated using Bobby service K. Miesenberger et al. (Eds.): ICCHP 2006, LNCS 4061, pp. 1087 – 1093, 2006. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2006

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against W3C accessibility standards. Blind people using assistive software performed developed set of test tasks. A number of accessibility issues were detected: difficult navigation, graphical links without alternative text description, untitled frames and inconsistent labelling for form elements. The library systems were accessible to experienced blind computer users but sometimes difficult in use. 2.2 Digital Publications Accessibility Not long ago visually impaired people had access only to books in Braille format and audio books recorded on cassettes or CD. Affordable personal computers allow access to printed publications by new innovative ways. An example of computer access to information is the reading of printed text using a scanner, optical character recognition software (OCR) and a program that change text to speech (TTS). Today many publishers offer both printed and electronic book versions (called e-Books). E-Books can be read on e-Book reading devices, personal computers, and palm-sized personal digital assistants. Electronic books are published in several e-Book formats. To read them users need various e-Book reading software. Digital Rights Management (DRM) used by e-book reading software causes additional accessibility problems. The e-Book reading software presents the text in graphic form that does not allow the text to be transferred to the clipboard. This pre vents the

Navigation Control File

Synchronization Files (smil 2.0)

Contetnt Files

File1.smil File2.smil

master.smil (smil 2.0) file1.smil file2.smil . . . fileK.smil includes links to every synchronization file in playing order

Content FileM.html The old lady pulled her spectacles down and looked over them about the room; then she put them up and looked out under them. She seldom or never looked through them for so small a thing as a boy; they were her state pride, the pride of her heart, and were built for "style," not service -- she could have seen through a pair of stove-lids just as well.

File1.mp3 FileK.smil

FileN.mp3

Fig. 1. Daisy book structure

Audio documents

ncc.html (xhtml 1.0)
Chapter 1

Heading 1.1
. . .
Chapter³ n

Text document (xhtml 1.0)

File1.html Content file includes text sections (paragraphs, sentences

Multimedia Browser for Internet Online Daisy Books

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duplication of the book content. Unfortunately it also prohibits the screen reader from accessing the e-book’s synthetic speech feature. The end result is that blind people are denied access to the e-Book, because the screen reader does not work correctly. The screen reader software they use intercepts the information being displayed on the monitor and uses a speech synthesiser to read it aloud. As a solution to this problem the companies such as MICROSOFT and ADOBE are proposing to extend functionality of e-book readers with an additional audio interfaces that would allow e-books to be accessed by people who are visually impaired. 2.3 Daisy Standard The Daisy Consortium founded in 1996 representing publishers and libraries for the blind has developed a new digital multimedia book standard, accessible to visually impaired readers (DAISY 3.0 ANSI/NISO Z39.86-2002). Daisy books present book content in multimode form including text, audio, and graphics. Readers can easily navigate in logical book structure by: chapters, headings, pages, paragraphs and sentences. Main daisy book structure is presented in figure 1. Daisy books can be played using hardware or software players. Currently world wide there are about 130000 available book titles.

3 System Deployment We present interactive system for online multimedia daisy books presentation, which main components are presented in figure 2. SERVER

CLIENT

Multimedia library management system Multimedia server

WWW browser

WWW Server

License Server

Inrteractive multimedia browser

Text searching Server

Fig. 2. Multimedia system components

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3.1 Management System for Internet Multimedia Library We present a system, which manages the virtual library of multimedia publications. The system is a result of a research project conducted by The Silesian University of Technology together with the Academic Library and School for the Blind in Poland. The design of the system allows: • cataloguing and collecting of multimedia publications like e-books, e-magazines,

digital talking books, digital music and movies • assures secure Internet access to the library resources by registered users • provides management of reader's orders • distributing of the ordered publications on CDROM disks

The presented library system is running in Linux environment on Pentium multiprocessor servers. The system is managed with the web user interface and standard Internet web browsers. The library is easily accessible to visually impaired people. The user web interface was designed with the special attention to requirements of blind and low vision internet users and allows for direct access to information on internet pages, easy navigation and adjustment of font size, color and contrast as specified by the individual user. WWW library service was build according to the W3C-WAI web content accessibility guidelines. Accessibility of the library pages was tested with the software for visually impaired users. Zoomtext, Jaws and Window-Eyes were used during testing. We present system services as data flow diagram in figure 3. R eaders rep os ytory, A d m in is trative data

P u blic ation s repos ytory

H ire, R ead er s ’ d ata etc

P u b lic ation s

DBMS P os tgr es S Q L

Q u ery, O r ders , C onf irm ation s , C atalog u es

A d m in is trative in form ation , P riviliage g ran t ord er

P ub lic ation s , s hipp in g ord ers

D igital pu blic ation s

A p a c h e + P H P – m id lla wa re R ead ers s ervic e

E ditin g p ub lic ations

S h ip ping

, O r ders , Q u ery, c atalog ues , C on firm ations

P u blic ation s to s end reader’s ad d res s

R ead er

S h ip per

A d m in is trar ions

ł

P u blic ation s to p reparing

L ibrarian

A d m in is trative data, orders , gran ting p rivileges

A d m inis trator

P ub lic ations

Fig. 3. Data flow diagram of management system

The presented library system offers the following services: all Internet users can search the library catalogues and browse detailed search results with information about found publications. This allows potential readers to get acquainted with offered publications and the user interface of the library system. All other services are available only to registered users. This guarantees secure and controlled access to


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offered publications. Users of the system are authorized during login with securely passed user identifier and password. Handicapped readers using standard web browsers and assistive software can search publications in the catalogue by title and author. Found publications are presented as a list. This allows handicapped readers to easily browse search results. After the publication title link is clicked on, the page with the detailed information about the publication is presented to the user. Readers can download publications to their local computer disk, browse publications online, add publications to the cart and browse its contents as in Internet shops. Publications collected in the cart can be ordered on the CD ROM disks. This allows for the alternative way of delivering digital talking books to readers who do not have fast Internet access. Readers can also browse the history of borrowed publications and suggest new publications for the library. The library system offers its users context sensitive help available in the navigation bar. The font size and color used on the library pages can be adjusted on a per user basis according to the information stored in the personal user profile. The system offers the following services to library personnel. Librarians can browse and modify the list of new publications proposed by readers. They can choose which publications to be prepared in accessible format and input them into the library server system. The system manages and allows for a number of librarians to work independently on preparing their publications. Next using the web browser he or she enters the catalogues data and publication file into the library server. After the data is verified, the publication is available to readers. The library system enables the efficient management of publications, reader accounts, orders, and generation of statistical library usage reports. 3.2 Interactive Multimedia Daisy Books Browser Currently available daisy players allow reading multimedia Daisy books to be stored on compact discs (CD) or local computer hard discs. Books recorded on CD-ROM's are collected personally or ordered by mail in the library. Some libraries offer digital books by Internet. This method requires full book contents download over the Internet. Books in Daisy format range from several to hundreds of megabytes in size. Downloading large amounts of data makes this approach to books’ distribution both difficult and time consuming. Access to information contained in multiple books is very difficult and multiple books information searching is practically impossible. In our continuous research and development of the multimedia library system we have designed and developed new multimedia Daisy book browser. The new software Daisy reader allows playing Daisy books online over the Internet or in the standard way, from CD or from the local hard disk. Online Daisy books are played from a multimedia server and are available for reading after a few seconds from being found in the library system. Books audio, text and graphics content are presented synchronously. Consecutive book pages are displayed. Sentences are highlighted with simultaneous audio being played. The book’s index allows access to selected chapter. The reader can also navigate through the logical book structure by: chapters, headings, pages, tables, paragraphs and sentences. Similar as in printed books readers can add bookmarks with text, audio notes and exchange bookmarks list each other. Browser offers searching text function which allows playing narrator’s speech and presenting highlighted text from place where it has been founded.

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Fig. 4. Main window browser

Browser user interface is customizable to different users group: blind, low vision, dyslectic, mobile impairment. Blind people can use browser with assistive software or use it in self voicing mode. We extend browser functionality which allows read aloud text DAISY book with synthetic voice. New navigation commands enable readers interactive audio browsing: sentence reading, word spelling and reading structural information like tables, math formulas. Interactive audio presentation of math formulas and tables allows preparing advanced DAISY scientific, technical books and educational materials for students, mathematicians and scientists. Our research, which cooperates with DAISY MathML Project, lead to extends DAISY standard. 3.3 System Implementation Our interactive multimedia Daisy book browser works together with multimedia Helix Universal server. Multimedia Helix server is integrated with the multimedia digital library management system. Using the web browser, users can search and browse library catalogue, after Daisy book selection system generates an encrypted license file (file with extension .dtb) this file contains access rights to the selected book. The web browser automatically starts the interactive multimedia Daisy book browser with the selected file. Next Daisy book browser establishes a connection with the streaming Helix Universal server. Text and graphics files and meta data describing book structure are accessed from WWW server. Multimedia book content in DAISY format is divided into parts and stored in many files: text xml, audio mp3 and graphics files. This is essential to continuous online book presentation over the Internet. Additional browser mechanisms preload book fragments and allow to present book contents without interruptions. Files are accessed in parallel with audio multimedia stream. Loaded xml files (containing book text) are buffered in Daisy browser memory which allows for smooth navigation. The user can search for information in the document


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before the document is loaded. The text search server implements this function. After the search request is processed and information about found text is passed back to browser. This information allows Daisy browser to playback book contents from any fragment that meets the search criteria. 3.4 System Scalability Selected multimedia streaming server (Helix Universal Server) works in a multiprocessor environment and allows for simultaneous data transmission and multi user service. During our work we tested the system’s scalability with a dual processor Pentium IV server running Linux operating system. Scalability tests were conducted using special client and server applications with client applications count from 2 to 32. Test applications working together with an independent coordinating server allowed collecting various transmission quality statistics.

4 System Deployment Presented system was installed at library for the blind in Poland. It successfully serves thousands users. Currently the library offers 2000 publications in the polish language. Visually impaired computer users in Poland have gained easy access to growing collection of books and magazines in digital format. The library system will also be installed in computer centre for blind and low vision students in Warsaw University, Poland. Adaptation centre of the University is preparing educational materials, scientific and technical books in Braille and other accessible digital formats. The library system will make possible cataloguing and collecting accessible educational materials prepared by other universities adaptation centers. The library will provide the requested publications to the registered disabled students from several universities. The preparation of educational materials in a group of universities can be less redundant and it is possible to produce more books in accessible formats. Our DaisyReader can be free downloaded from www.key.org.pl . For more information visit www.iddw.org .

References 1. Brzoza P., Spinczyk D.: Online Internet Interactive System for Multimedia Daisy Books Presentation. Accessible Design in the Digital World Dundee (2005) 2. Brzoza P., Moroz P.: Internet Multimedia Library Accessible to Impaired Readers. ICEVI European Conference, Chemnitz (2005) 3. Brzoza P.: Presenting structural information in multimedia documents. Computer Networks Conference, Zakopane (2005) 4. Brzoza P.: Presenting accessible information in multimedia environments. Workshop New strategies for accessible information provision. Paris (2004) 5. Brzoza P.: Virtual multimedia library accessible to blind people. Technology And Persons With Disabilities, Los Angeles, (2003)